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qsz comments on Open Thread, Apr. 13 - Apr. 19, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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This should belong to the stupid questions thread but anyway... why don't bars, inns, taverns, pubs, whatevers work in reality the same way they do in fiction, or, better question, under what conditions, when and where do or would they work like that?
You travel to another city on a business trip, say, to visit a trade show the next day. Same country or different doesn't matter but let's assume you speak the language. You check in your hotel. You have a free evening and go exploring. You go to the hotels bar or another bars, inns, taverns, pubs. What will happen? Exactly nothing. You will probably a have a drink or three alone, or if you don't drink alcohol it will be even more boring, have some dinner, perhaps sight-see as long as it is not dark then retire to your room early because you are bored. The point is, nobody will socialize with you, nor give you the signs that you are welcome to socialize with them. You will get to know exactly zero locals. You will not participate in their lives. You will be an outsider, it will feel like staring at an aquarium. You sit in a bar in a corner, nursing a beer, while you watch the locals come and go, greet each other, chat with each other, while they ignore your existence. A pretty sad thing actually. They seem to have zero interest in getting to know a non-local. You may even get suspicious glances, as they are used to knowing all the faces in their bar, or because simply you radiate those I-don't-belong-here signals. A pretty sad thing overall.
In fiction this is so different... not only the lively taverns in Tolkienesque fiction where travellers immediate come together and entertain each other with stories, but even in modern, James Bondesque fiction there are things happening in hotel bars after the elegant secret agent checks in, friends and enemies made, pick-ups attempted and so on. There is a social life going on.
Why is it so, or what conditions would make it different? I have exactly one experience when it was not so. We were in a classic outback, behind the beyond farmer town, and we were 10 people canooing down the river. Apparently people in more boring, small-town places are more interested about outsiders, and larger groups mix easier than one lone traveller with a whole bar. If I remember right, we were largely discussing amongst each other and basically the locals overheard us and pitched in. Perhaps such conversation-starter signals are necessary.
As of now it feels like the precondition for getting to know people is to be with people I already know. This also means sticking to cities where acquaintances live in. This sounds too limiting.
tl;dr: go to places with conversation potential and show that you have value and interest.
Business travel + city destination is a significant obstacle already. Locals may well be highly jaded with "interchangeable" business travellers who are fatigued on the road and may not be at their best socially.
And usually business travellers stay in places that are convenient for their work destinations, be it office, site or conference centre ... nearby establishments are far more likely to attract after-work crowds (catching up socially with friends, or continuing workplace conversations), not very good opportunity for an outsider to get involved.
So it's no surprise that this happens:
I see loads of people like this in the nearest pubs and hotel bars to my workplace: dozens of solo travelers who are not engaged/engaging with the locals in the slightest. There are various ways to improve on this but it requires social effort. First, choice of destination is key. I travel a lot for work, and always try to find a pub or bar away from the main business areas, ideally with a good reputation for its drinks (I am partial to local beers in such circumstances). Often they look like "old man pubs" but as I advance into old-man-ness myself, I find these more and more welcoming.
Then don't go hide in a corner but instead, hang out at the bar and get into a drinks-related conversation. Can be as simple as asking for a drink recommendation from the server, or once you've sunk one or two, other recommendations for drinking around town. You may find yourself stuck in a "beer bore" conversation but more often in my experience this is just the starting point. Sometimes it doesn't work, but retreating to a corner table, reading a book or resorting to a smartphone are all signs of giving up, and most places I've travelled these are clear signals that a person doesn't want to be disturbed.
More generally, it's all about revealing some kind of common ground - and showing other people that you have potential conversation value (some kind of conversation-starter signals), AND are interested in talking to them. Not all one-off visitors want a chat - and going back to the original point, this is very often the case with business travellers who might just be counting the days until they return home, or focussed so much on work they don't care about their surroundings.
Finally, there are of course vastly different social practices across different countries, regions, neighbourhoods. My comments above are mainly related to my experiences in England and northern Europe. My experience in Scotland, and Ireland (and even more so, midwestern USA, where I grew up) is that one must work hard if one wishes to avoid conversation with locals.