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Comment by nippoo | Hacker News Reader

I'm from the UK, where people on public transport go to great lengths to avoid ever making eye contact or talking with strangers.

I remember my first Greyhound bus experience about 10 years ago, travelling from NYC to Boston. I'd just moved to the US and had hardly any friends. I remember sitting next to someone on the bus - he looked over and realised that we were both scrolling HN on our phones! We struck up conversation and, long story short, he ended up inviting me to a meetup group at MIT from which I've made a few lifelong friends.

There's a lot that's weird about the US but I really do miss the cultural openness to forming new human connections that's much more prevalent there. I wonder how many interesting conversations and experiences I'm missing out on by staying silent and putting headphones every time I take public transport here...

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I think the different length of trips might have something to do with this. It's also the norm not to talk to strangers on subway systems in the US in my experience (at least the ones I'm familiar with; Philly, DC, NYC, Boston) but it doesn't feel as taboo on e.g Amtrak. There might be something about longer trips that encourages it, since unless you've brought some form of entertainment you're sitting there for a while without much to do.

While there’s certainly something to be said for being forced to share space for an extended duration, speaking as someone born and raised in Boston, it’s not super uncommon to see strangers interacting on the T. Maybe the overwhelming numbers of students has something to do with it, I don’t know. But it happens from time to time. What I have no perspective on is if this is true, or not true, of other dense metro US population centers.

This is my experience as well: openness scales with trip distance.

If you're on the subway, you're probably just trying to get yourself to work, probably stressed out, lots of creeps and weirdos, etc. Get on the train, don't bother anyone, get out of each other's way, get off the train at your stop.

Whereas on Amtrak (and to a lesser extent buses) I've struck up conversations with people and had people strike up conversations with me. There's something psychologically different about being settled in one place for a while, as opposed to in a situation where everyone is up and moving and rushing past each other.

I get where this comes from, and there's truth in it. But if you want to speak with people and connect with them (especially on longer journeys rather than a seven minute Tube journey) do try it. I regularly speak to people on train journeys, especially if I'm travelling alone, and have had great fun conversations and learnt about the person. If you're generally okay at picking up cues you'll be able to tell when people don't want to talk or when they're done talking for now. I live and was born in the UK. I suppose my point is don't let a sense people don't do it here hold you back: lots of people have said they've had real fun talking on an otherwise dull journey.

It's given me some great journeys and little windows into lives I haven't lived.

The thing about long-distance train and airplane conversations is that you have to be OK letting the conversation drop. If the other person wants to go back to their book, or wants to ponder something, you need to be perceptive to that and allow them to exit the conversation. Otherwise it will go from being friendly to making the other person feel trapped and annoyed.

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