What is the point of travelling if you don't talk to the people you meet?

Joe is right about planes and trains. Air travel is so unpleasant these days that many people bear it grimly, knuckling down with a book or very deliberately isolating themselves in blanket and eye-mask. I usually travel with Himself, who likes the aisle seat, so what chatting I do normally happens in the line-up for the toilet, or while wrestling with carry-on luggage.

Trains are so different. We travelled back and forth across Ireland by rail, inevitably meeting all kinds of people. Outbound from Dublin to Galway there was a party of cheerful drunks, including one guy who wanted to tell us all about his fascination with Canadian trains, especially the route through the Rocky Mountains. He talked for at least an hour and half without hardly drawing breath. On the way back, a woman with a small grand-daughter treated me to an hour and a half of intermittent abuse for the offence of moving the little girl away from the luggage rack as I was heaving my suitcase into it. (What would she have done if I had dropped the suitcase on the child? I shudder to think.) As a result, the other passengers worked to drown her out by pointedly conversing with us about every imaginable thing from farming to politics. I learned a great deal on that trip. On the Luas rapid-transit in Dublin, a cheerful young man buttonholed me to find out how he could get a job in Canada. I had to admit that I had no idea, not being in need of a job myself at the time, and to this day I wonder how in blazes he picked me for a Canadian. (No, I was not wearing a Tilley hat, or carrying a rucksack with a maple leaf patch on it.)

An excellent way to talk to strangers in Ireland is to stop in the street and unfold a map. Within seconds, someone will arrive to help.