It's pretty common to meet and interact with people when you travel. It could be the person sitting next to you on the plane or someone near you at an airport bar.
And when you are traveling to an event, you might even see some of the people on your flight at that event.
Most of the time, you will never see or interact with that person again. This is NOT one of those stories.
In 2018, my friend Roberto Pazos and I were on a flight from Sweden to Russia with a stopover in Latvia. We were following the Peru Soccer team which had qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 26 years. The team had just played its final World Cup "warm up" game in Gothenburg tying the Swedish national team in a scoreless game.
Excitement was high and Peruvian fans were everywhere, easily identified by their red and white team jerseys, which they wore with great pride.
As we were preparing to land in Riga, Roberto started up a conversation with one of the fans on the plane. They chatted and while deplaning took this photo.
Roberto Pazos and Jaime Crispin on the runway at Riga International Airport in Latvia
Inside we learned more about our new friend. He told us his name Jamie Crispin. He lives in Australia but is passionate about his native Peru and its soccer club. We said good-bye to Jaime and traveled onto Moscow. Probably just another random encounter with a fellow traveler.
From Moscow, we made our way to Saransk. And who did we see again? Jamie Crispin. We took another photo with him. We had now seen him in two countries. The next year, Roberto and I went to Brazil to attend another soccer match. Here, on the other side of the world from Australia was Jaime, smiling as he always seems to do. He greeted us warmly and we took another photo together. And later, we both ended up in Peru at the same time. (We only exchanged messages there.)
Jamie is a very likeable guy and often says hello on social media. It's nice to meet people and to stay in contact. And our friendship started in a country where the only thing I saw, was the airport.
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