Weather is the easy starter. Usually ask how their day has been. Or what they have planned to do etc.
I had a 30 min conversation aboout soccer last night with a Croatian Liverpool FC supporter. I love sports especially soccer. So that was great.
We started with fishing, he and his mates caught a shark! Slaughtered it and shared it among themselves, (his Esky was in my boot with chopped shark meat) then about the affairs of the state of South Australia, the blackout state, high unemployment rate, SA being the backwater. I'm in SA. The trip was 30min. He gave me 5* and wrote in the weekly report: Thank you for a decent conversation.