[calme_toi]

I feel like the city life makes us talk less to strangers. Living in London, I cannot really remember when was the last time I talk to a stranger except asking/being asked for directions.

Back when I was living in a small town outside Amsterdam called Abcoude, I had much more conversations with strangers even I don’t speak Dutch at all.

Learnt from them that it’s the only place in the world with name starts with abc and ends with de. :)

[pj_mukh]

I swear 8/10 people I've met who say this are suburbanites going into the city to work. They rush around for work all day in the city, then sit alone in a car to get back home, wondering why they haven't met anyone new today.

Having had lived in cities and towns of multiple sizes, a dense neighborhood where my daily "operations" naturally put me in contact with the same faces everyday increased my level of interaction 10x.

[stevekemp]

I live in Finland, where the stereotype is that people don't do smalltalk, or interact with strangers.

But I see the same faces daily, in everyday life such as going to the local store. I've spent months chatting/flirting with the random people I come across, and it almost always goes well.

[uoaei]

It would do everyone well to talk to a professional about the many fears they seem so comfortable expressing over faceless, remote internet discussions. Un- or under-acknowledged anxieties and fears develop into complexes, and can cause severe social discomforts. This can result in the issues like those described, where people may have trouble interacting with strangers, but blame the society for not fitting their tight mold of how people should interact, rather than recognize that their discomfort arises from their frame of mind.

[erie]

I was in a cable car with my wife in a Russian resorts area, Sochi, and a 'senior old couple entered sitting opposite to us. I immediately started a conversation with my 20 phrases I have learnt asking him where he was from. He snapped and started shouting at me in that small space.I understood that he was telling me it was me who should have said where I was from as I look foreign. I knew I screwed up by not starting with a polite Russian pozhaluysta. Still that did not stop me from interacting with Russians who are normally very easy going and open to strangers in a naive way sometimes. Ironically, I belong to the ethnic people what were in that region and were killed by the Russians.

Sochi Was the Site of a Horrific Ethnic Cleansing https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/150-years-ago-Sochi-w...

[null_object]

> Living in London, I cannot really remember when was the last time I talk to a stranger

I lived in central London (Camden) for 15 years before moving to Stockholm, and almost every day was full of small encounters and discussions with strangers: about the weather, bemoaning our politicians, whether the food was any good, and so on.

London is a super-chatty town, and people constantly want to engage each other - even sometimes when you’re not in the mood.

If you want to see a place where strangers NEVER speak to each other (unless you’re obviously a tourist and the locals want to give you a good impression of their home-town), then come here to Stockholm. Right now there’s a big ad campaign running, encouraging people to say “hello!” To their neighbors (campaign is called “Hej granne!”)

Yep people don’t even say hi to the person they meet in the stairs.

[wslh]

In Madrid, an obviously big city, you can easily convert small talks with long talks with strangers, so I think it is more linked to the city culture.

[macleginn]

After living in a small town for a considerable amount of time, it is possible to run out of strangers.

[ChuckNorris89]

What if there are middle grounds between small towns and large metro areas?

Running out of strangers isn't that bad for everyone. For some it's nice to be a regular somewhere and grow roots and feel part of the community.

[baxtr]

Good point. I think that cities above 100k are pretty decent in that regard.

[rpastuszak]

Heh, one of the elevators at my uni had a sign saying "eye contact forbidden". It was a joke, obviously, but I could imagine seeing it in an office, somewhere between Liverpool St and St Paul's.

[m3kw9]

The busyness of downtown life has a lot to do with that rushing to work and home, and then when you actually go out, you have a few friends with you.