I'm discovering that there are protocols for conversation with strangers wherever you go. But they vary from region to region and country to country. I was telling my friends the other day about the protocols that I've observed in New Zealand. They basically revolve around discussing the weather in very general terms. You must not like the rain and cold. You must be pleased with sunny days. You cannot be too specific in your observations of either, nor should you include any personal anecdotes at the risk of throwing the stranger off their conversational game.
Example: It had been raining non-stop for a couple days and was coming down in buckets. I was buying some vitamins and the lady helping me expressed her disbelief at the amount of rain we were getting (even though we get that much rain all the time). I responded with a hearty "oh my gosh, I know! I had some wash on the line that I ran outside to get and I was completely soaked!"

...............crickets....................
too much information.



In contrast, I've noticed that here, in North Carolina, you can never divulge too much information. I've been asked by every native (with families that go back several generations) North Carolinian where I'm from, which is a complicated question for me to answer. They don't mean where do I live now, they mean where are my people from, where did I grow up.
So I tell them, "Kentucky" and they want to know, "what part". I tell them, "Louisville" and they respond by nodding (and I can tell that they're thinking "well, i suppose that's the south...technically") and then asking me if I know where (insert name of small, obscure town) is and I say yes, even when I usually don't know. They then tell me of a relative they have that lives in that small, obscure town and what that relative does (or doesn't do) for a job, how many children they have, how their marriage is going, where they lived before that and how often they come back home to visit. I have not mastered the art of the perfect response to this conversation, so I sometimes deflect by asking them more questions, like "do you have any other children and where are they?" I imagine though, that the perfect response would be an interesting anecdote about an experience I had in that small, obscure town or somewhere nearby it.
but usually I am at a loss, based on my lack of knowledge of said small, obscure town and/or the profession of the relative and reply with a measly "oh, cooool."

...............crickets................
not enough information.