I'm jealous of you Joe! I speak German but not well enough to converse all that fluently. I totally agree with you; travelling is made a hundred times more interesting when one can chat to people en route. To me, it's part of the holiday pleasure. It's not often that people clam up and refuse to have a natter.
My husband has a good old laugh at me in the supermarket. He does the checkout while I have a sit-down, and when I'm in full flow with some old person like myself, he's grinning at me from afar. He calls me Mrs Yap-Yap!
Some of my most interesting and moving conversations have been with the family or friends of prisoners. During my Prison Visiting years, I've spent hours and hours in many a Visit Waiting Area, and people have told me so many troubles and worries while we sat there. Their lives were in some cases a total nightmare, and I could only sympathise and try to comfort them. It really opened my eyes to the kind of existence some people endure. Parkhurst Prison was one of the worst, since at that time they took in many mentally disturbed inmates, and the families needed to take a ferry to cross to the Isle of Wight, many with small children in tow.