On meeting strangers

By Ani Chkhikvadze
Real Clear Wire

Somewhere on the southern edge of Greece, on the island of Rhodes, a tall man with a sunburned face and a body as if sculpted by centuries of salt and wind stood at the helm of a little, ridiculous-looking steel boat called Yellow Submarine, advertising rides to children. Having missed all the other regular ferries, I decided to board it. 'I came this far,' he said with a grin, 'because I'm escaping from my wife.' Then he turned to my Ukrainian friend, who fears boats but not Russian bombs, as she froze at the dock while six-year-olds jumped aboard. The captain caught her hesitation, pointed to a faded icon of the Virgin Mary taped to the cabin wall, and declared: 'Only she can save you now.'

That’s the thing about strangers. You never know which kind you’ll meet. Some offer theology with a side of humor; others offer their life story over cheap beer in a dimly lit bar, over coffee at a train station, or during a slow ferry ride under the Aegean sun. There's something particularly democratic in the randomness of it all. I have met a famous tennis player in a seaside Chilean town, shared cigarettes with a well-known Hollywood producer across the balconies in Kyiv, and lost my voice, scarf, and dignity with wannabe a rugby player in Paris. All thanks to randomly striking up conversations with people you do not know.

Meeting strangers, while wandering foreign streets or walking the same block you’ve lived on for years, is one of the quiet pleasures of being alive. It’s not just a chance to escape the loop of your own head, but to be absorbed into someone else’s. You trade details, thoughts, jokes, sometimes fears, and build a shared little world together for five minutes, or five hours. Then you leave it behind, and sometimes it stays with you.

'What do you think of Cypriots?' I asked the ferry captain whose name I've forgotten and whom I'll never see again, probing for material for a piece I was writing. 'Being Cypriot isn't a nationality,' he replied. 'It's a profession.' We both laughed. When I told him where I hailed from, he said, 'I've stayed away from Georgian women since Medea,' then asked: 'What's worse Medea killing her children, or feeding them to Jason?' We debated the point, apparently drawing from some obscure theatrical interpretation. But the better point was this: strangers improve your world. They remind you that life is bigger, weirder, more contradictory than your well-organized routine.

The beauty of stranger encounters has been captured across art and cinema, from the romantic serendipity of Before Sunrise to the cultural poetry of Lost in Translation. Hitchcock explored the territory, albeit from a darker angle, in Strangers on a Train, reminding us that not every random encounter leads to pleasant discoveries. Yet most of us, thankfully, won't meet the psychopaths plotting to kill our estranged spouses, and hopefully, we don't need such services anyway.

Where Camus's The Stranger avoided meaning, I keep finding it in people I've just met. On an island off Sardinia, Giovanni, required by his dominating father to run the family hotel, sat with us at 3 a.m., because his newly hired employee, on his very first day, had declared his car broke down near the island’s party town. On a Friday night. Giovanni was happy to chat to people his age, joking that most of their guests were Germans from World War I, wandering around in shorts in January, always prepping for another war. Then he pointed at his older colleague, who had passed out on the couch, drooling loudly, and said: ‘He is training to be German.’ He seemed to enjoy the conversation as much as we enjoyed his humor. And in those moments, connections happen. 

Beyond humor, laughter, and stolen stories, there's something profound about how strangers often become unexpected companions for our deeper emotions. Sharing feelings of loneliness, fears, unmet ambitions and struggles frequently feels easier with someone you've just met than with those who know you well. Perhaps it's the temporary nature of these connections that creates a safe space for honesty. Too many times, strangers have helped me with tears, mocked my suffering or heartbreak with irony and vicious humor that always brings you back to your senses, makes you smile and reminds you of what matters in life.

The practical benefits of meeting strangers extend far beyond emotional catharsis. Whether you've walked unfamiliar cities, boarded trains, sat in airports, stood in bomb shelters, or simply waited in line for coffee, stranger assistance has likely shaped your experience. These encounters make it easy to understand not just the place where you find yourself, but society, whether your own or foreign, in a better way.

I think of Sergio, who pressed on the gas, risking multiple fines, to get my friend and me to the port in time for a ferry, putting in more effort for our benefit than our own parents might have done. I'll probably never see Sergio again. I don't have his number. Nor his Instagram. I’ll probably think of him every time I feel alone in a foreign place and someone helps me. His effort reinforced my faith in human kindness; it warmed the heart and made me hopeful for humanity.

Last night, a Tunisian young man helped me onto the bus home while wrestling with heartbreak over a lost love in California whom he had betrayed. ‘I still love her,’ he confessed. Such moments offer windows into universal human experiences, the shared pains of hearts and minds that operate similarly across cultures and continents.

Writing this piece in Rome's unusually friendly coffee house, I turned to the girls at the table next to me and recruited them as research assistants. Did they have any good stranger stories? One shared how her parents met on a boat to Dover; her mother was terrified of moths, and her father eliminated every intruder he could find. They've been married since 1987. Even asking strangers about their stranger stories, it turns out, yields perfect material. Others end in marriage.

Yet, these moments of connection come with their own melancholy. Eventually, you have to leave them behind, say goodbye to someone who you never knew but felt like your childhood friend.

On that Greek island, standing on a boat led by a man theatrically fleeing his wife, you laugh so hard you forget your name and worries. And that, too, is worth remembering.

Ani Chkhikvadze is a Washington-based journalist covering U.S. foreign policy, international security and post-Soviet affairs. A former Voice of America correspondent, originally from Georgia, she has reported from Ukraine and contributed to Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, the Free Press, Spectator US, the Washington Examiner, and others. She holds a master’s from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.