Topics that keep popping up again and again when meeting strangers abroad:
- The weather (esp. when you live in California)
- Flight lengths (esp. when you’re talking to Aussies and Kiwis, who have no concept of how far they are from the rest of the West)
- The language spoken in [insert country here]. Once you’ve spoken to a few hundred people, you basically know this for any country (the last one I learned was Pashto from a guy from Afghanistan)
- Healthcare (seemingly only a topic of interest when you’re from the US and they’re not)
- American politics (“I want to visit someday, but maybe not now…”)
- Visiting Swanston Farm to see cows (seemingly only in groupchats near Edinburgh)