People You've Met While Dining Alone

[Gifted Gourmet]

Met a lovely woman on a tour who was somewhat elderly and in need of some physical assistance but who was one of those "Most Memorable Characters" that were made famous by Reader's Digest over the years.

I digress ... Norma was a travel afficianado and she shared her memories at meals over some two weeks as we explored Buddapest, Vienna, and Prague. She returned to the United States before I went on the Salzburg ... but she was truly a "find" and remains a friend even unto this day. Turns out that she is an aunt to Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. I am so glad that I introduced myself to her!

On my first solo trip to London, I met a number of people who insisted that I spend time with them after meals .. wound up at places like London's Chinatown with one couple (who bickered over everything!) and then another couple who took me through a castle with them. I think one can rather sense who to speak with while traveling solo ... who is amenable and interesting ...

Oh yes and then there is this repressed memory: two bickering newly-divorced nurses from New Jersey took me through Madame Tussaud's once .... the axe in the dungeon began to look mighty interesting ...

[SuzySushi]

Fascinating topic and experiences!

Offhand, through all my travels, I can't recall ever joining or being joined by someone when dining alone. I always seem to meet people elsewhere, and end up dining with them! One favorite memory is the two Japanese flight attendants I met at the Parthenon in Athens; since I spoke Japanese (rusty now, but good back then), we struck up a conversation and ended up going to dinner together. Corresponded with them for a while, too.

Of course, there was also the time I was dining at a trendy London restaurant at a table opposite from a younger Michael Caine, who was also dining alone. It would've been very un-cool to ask him to join me (or vice versa!) or bother him for his autograph, so a brief head-nod sufficed!

[racheld]

These are all just wonderful stories.

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Don't you think some are terrible stories? Being taken for a child prostitute in a fancy hotel? That's just awful, shocking, and I would think that it constituted criminal activity on the part of both the patron and hotel.

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I have two daughters and two granddaughters, and the person who would make such an approach to any one of MINE would leave the vicinity plus wounds and MINUS necessities.

I was expressing my appreciation of the tellings and the words, not referring to the serious content. Just the REAL of the episodes and the writers' ways of expressing those vivid moments...THAT's what I was referring to. Consider this an edit of my misspoken enthusiasm for the writing.

[Sugarella]

Uh -oh. Sorry if my story was upsetting to people. Maybe I shouldn't have written it.

To clarify again though, I don't think the hotel condoned, encouraged, or otherwise tolerated the customer's behaviour. I'm not dissing the Empress, here. And in his defence, I think the bartender was just trying to warn me about avoiding creeps like that in the future or explain why I was targeted. I'm sure the bartender and other staff prior to this just saw me as a teenager eating her breakfast; nothing more.

[Kent Wang]

How do you usually make or receive the first contact? Walking up to someone and asking point blank is pretty bold.

I think a good strategy is to offer to split a bottle of wine. I did this on a train from Berlin to The Hague with two Germans who were seated next to me because the dining car was pretty packed.

[FabulousFoodBabe]

Soooo ... I'm reading this thread, wondering if I'll recognize anyone! When I eat alone, it's on purpose. But when I'm with others and see someone dining alone, I always invite them to join us. Some do, some don't. Everyone has a story, and I love getting it. (I know, I know, it appears in this forum that i'm kind of demure and prim ... but I just walk up and ask the person if they would like company and if ours would do.)

Once, in the BVI, there was a writer from St. Elsewhere (remember that show? Still one of my favorites). Mostly, it's been someone traveling on business. No bad experiences, though.

Sugarella, I'm sure that as you think of your experience over the years, it went from immediately perplexing, to scary as hell, to "here's one for the autobiography!" I am very glad you told it.

[bleudauvergne]

I've never had a bad experience, either, although I have to say that I never dined alone in a restaurant before I became an adult.

How do you usually make or receive the first contact? Walking up to someone and asking point blank is pretty bold.

Good question. Lets see. I usually end up bumping into my dining companions before the meal, either 1) guessing that they'll know a good place to go being locals or 2) they seem like good people and are traveling and need help.

I've never actually asked someone to join me or vice versa after already having been seated for a meal - although in Germany, sometimes I would be seated at the same table with others by the restaurants.

One particular excellent memory of that kind is from a meal in Frankfurt, a stone cavern of a place that had a specialty of sausages and apfelwein - a wonderful drink that I discovered that day. The owners had arriving guests file in and sit at benches aside one long heavy wooden table. As the meal progressed, more and more arrived, and we found ourselves sitting closer together to make room for more arriving. My newfound table companions who were in the know ordered the drinks in the correct quantity and after some time with sausages, saurkraut, and lots of the drink, which tasted mild and tangy with a bit of yeast and apple, the entire long table, completely full of strangers, to me and to each other, began to sing songs and we all swayed from side to side to the singing. It was wonderful to have plunged into that experience completely by suprise.

Another time I worked in Beijing and I was on my way from the office to a little restaurant I knew nearby that wasn't very well known to anyone but the regulars. There was a couple that looked lost and I asked if they needed some help. I pointed them in the right direction, and as a last question, they asked where would be a good place to eat nearby, so I offered to take them along with me. It was your typical little place, no menu, one of those places where you just order, and I ordered for the three of us. They were very interesting people, and extremely grateful for my help. They were such nice people that that weekend I did some touring in and around Beijing with them. The guy was a photograher, and he gave me some great tips and advice on how to identify good subjects for photos. Some of that advice still comes to mind to this day whenever I am out with my camera.

[lesfen]

I'm so glad this thread exists, if for no other reason than to show it to my friend who swears that I'm going to get myself killed because I always invite strangers to eat or drink with me. "See! It's not just me!!"

I wouldn't call myself a loner, per se, but if I want to do something and my husband, friends, or relatives are busy or just aren't interested, it doesn't stop me from going. I love seeing a movie by myself. I have no problem sitting at a bar alone but I do have to admit that I don't like sitting at a table alone. I love the fact that we have a couple of local joints that employ the "communal table". That always turns out to be an interesting experience.

[Megan Blocker]

I wouldn't call myself a loner, per se, but if I want to do something and my husband, friends, or relatives are busy or just aren't interested, it doesn't stop me from going.  I love seeing a movie by myself.  I have no problem sitting at a bar alone but I do have to admit that I don't like sitting at a table alone.  I love the fact that we have a couple of local joints that employ the "communal table".  That always turns out to be an interesting experience.

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Ditto.

I also go to the movies alone a lot, and have a tendency to run into some interesting characters...but that's a little OT, I suppose!

[racheld]

I didn't think to mention the choir, until Lucy's evocative "sway and sing" memory brought it back. And we weren't dining, exactly, but LOTS of beer was involved---gallons and tanks and big vats of it.

Years ago, we went with a group of conventioneers to St. Louis, and one of the scheduled sightseeing things was a tour of Anheuser Busch. It was listed in the little itinerary we all got, a morning tour, with a nice ladies' luncheon after at a lovely restaurant. So we all dressed accordingly, in our dresses and pumps, and set off to tour the "building" where Budweiser was made.

NOBODY told us that the site covered a couple of city blocks, and lots of the walking to and from was outside. In the snow. We stumbled along, up one sidewalk and down another, into buildings of tanks smelling of yeasty promise, through huge doors (one sidetrip through the stables, where the magnificent Clydesdales greeted us with gentle nods or derisive snorts) and up and down vast moving indoor tracks like flat escalators.

We'd walk and look, trundling along or being levitated up several floors on a vast people-belt. And in our group of maybe fifty, there was a bit of unexpected magic. A college choir from Colorado or Utah--somewhere out there--was interspersed throughout our group, and in the long moving lines from floor to floor of those vast buildings, one or another would sing out, clear and true, and all the others would join right in, song after song. And they didn't mind if we joined in, singing along, being a part of something so special, our everyday voices grown exponentially more true and vivid by the talented company we kept.

No ride through Willie Wonka's chocolate landscape was quite so appealing. It was like being in the middle of a wonderful musicbox, the notes echoing from all that copper and steel and cavernous space. They sang rousing choruses, they harmonized on old favorites, they stilled the entire place with a skin-tingling rendition of "Greensleeves" which I can hear to this day. It was a special moment in a special time, and their presence and wonderful voices rendered an everyday sightseeing tour magical.

It's been YEARS, and it's still one of my favorite travel-memories.

[Bond Girl]

Sugarella, I've had the similar experience at a Jean George restaurant in New York City, a wrinkly white haired old man asked if I would take 1000 bucks for 15 minutes. But, I wasn't a kid and I wasn't alone either. It's just one of those unfortunate things that happens...

Having said that, I've met some pretty interesting people eating alone. I once sat next to a very nice but grungy guy at the sushi bar in the East Village, and he told me that he played in a band called "Foo Fighters". Knowing nothing about pop music, I just nodded and smiled, thinking that everyone in East Village played in a band. He gave me a CD, and it turned out that they make pretty cool music and now I have foo fighters on my ipod.

The first time that I was in Barcelona, I met a guy eating alone in a restaurant He spoke German and a bit of English. and I have some command of German and French. Neither one of us spoke any Spanish, but the waiter has a bit of French and a bit of English. So, between the three languages, we manage to negotiate a dinner order. He was some sort of car racing champion in town to see a sponsor, and for the next week, I was wined and dined through out Spain.

[Chufi]

When I was 18, I travelled to Rome to visit a friend who was studying there. During the day she was too busy to join me so I had to go exploring the city on my own. It was my first time travelling alone, I had long blond hair, it was January and it seemed I was the only blond young tourist in all of Rome...

I was literally chased by Italian guys who wanted to take me for coffee, something to eat or (as a nice variation ) to show me a church. I ran away from all of them because I was so terribly shy and did not have a clue how to handle the situation. I ended up being too scared to even go into a bakery to buy a piece of bread. I walked around for hours and hours without anything to eat, not wanting to go back to the apartment, because after all I was in Rome and I felt obligated to see all the sights. To this day, when I think of Rome, I feel a hunger pang in my stomach I wonder what would have happened had I gone for a pizza with one of those guys.. I might have had some real good pizza..

[Pontormo]

Poor Chufi!

I was in an Alice in Wonderland phase myself the first time I spent a week alone in Rome.

Very late at night, it may have been off-season too, the only place I could find open and accommodating to a student budget in the Trastevere was microbiotic (that's another story, I know). So, of course, there were VERY few people eating there. A young man and woman, siblings about my age, struck up a conversation with me. They were visiting from Florence, and so the brother ended up writing out his name and telephone number to use when I returned to their hometown.

Being the gentleman that he was, he said good-night to his sister and offered to escort me to my hotel. The demonstration of his skills in palm-reading kind of left me with the impression that I knew where this was going.

Yes, indeed. When he got off the tram at my stop, he asked "Come dormi?"--"How are you sleeping?"

"With a pillow," I replied.

[misstenacity]

My oh my - here come the Rome stories!

Mine didn't involve food but rather a generous young woman and her moped giving me a lift, so I'll not go into that one.

My favorite "alone" story is from Reno, NV. I was 22 and on a long cross-country roadtrip with a few destinations in mind but no hurry to get to them nor set routes. So, it was sometime after visiting a friend in Lander, WY that I ended up in Reno.

I was moderately poor and sought out the place that I knew would have a fantastically large and cheap breakfast - the Circus Circus buffet. I made a few chit-chatty comments with an older man while at the buffet, but thought nothing of it. Once sitting at my table with inordinate amounts of food I saw that he was coming over, and I instinctively thought, "hmmm".

For the record, I do often like sitting alone, just people watching, reading, etc. So with just a slight bit of annoyance I allowed him to sit with me. What a great decision! We chatted about why we were in Reno, which as you already know for me was for no reason at all, and for him it was a business trip but he apparently had a big thing for Keno. A big thing, since the hotel always comped him whatever he wanted while he was in town.

We talked about his family in California, his kids and grandkids, and then he offered me a hotel room, being sure to mention that it was an extra room the hotel would give him - nowhere near to his. After he heard that I was sleeping in my car for much of my trip he couldn't not offer. With minor hesitation I did take him up on it, and enjoyed a very nice hot shower. Later in the day I walked around town and then joined him and a few business contacts for a very foofy dinner, the likes of which I was not in a position to appreciate. The next morning we had breakfast again, exchanged addresses, and I was on my way.

Overall I thought, 'what a nice guy, if a bit lonely'. But he was not at all boring to talk to, and about a month after my road trip was over I recieved a letter from him with a picture of his daughter's family in CA, inviting me to visit if I was in the area again.

A great experience, and if you hesitate to engage strangers out there in the world, just remember that about 1 out of 1000 might actually intend to do you harm. Maybe even less. Your odds are very high that you are going to come out of the situation with a good story and probably a new friend.

Andrea

http://tenacity.net