I love to travel, in large part because it requires that you talk to A LOT of strangers. On my recent trip to Istanbul, I wandered about for three days. Among the many friendly people I met, I came across a student who'd recently moved to Istanbul who was visiting the Blue Mosque like I was, the owner of a drum shop who gave me a demo of the beautiful Turkish Darbouka I bought, and the owner of a variety of shops that sold everything from jewelry to carpets, who took me through them and chatted about his own experiences in the U.S. and as a businessman now back in Turkey.