London. The subway. My trains suddenly stops in the middle of nowhere. A few minutes pass with no announcement. Time drags until, finally, I catch the eye of the girl sitting next to me and we exchange a few words. Then I notice two young, well-dressed men smirking at us from the other end of the carriage. Have I done something wrong?
I realise that I have broken the golden social rule: never talk to strangers, even if out-of-the ordinary events are occurring. It strikes me as quite perverse. City-dwellers everywhere go to great lengths to protect their personal space, but in the case of a possible emergency, isn't this going a little too far?
Last year, back in Sydney, I had the opposite experience. Having just flown in after an absence of six months, I was stunned to notice how friendly people are to strangers. Everywhere I went, I spied people striking up conversations with people who they evidently didn't know.
These weren't just vague, impersonal conversations, either: names, dates, places, hopes and dreams were all revealed in the space of approximately five minutes. I bought a drink and had a detailed conversation with the vendor about our travelling experiences.
I saw two young people who had obviously just met talking about their career aspirations for a good ten minutes while they waited for a train. I'm told that Australian men will even talk to strangers while peeing into a urinal–an expression of intimacy if ever I've heard one.