An Englishman doesn't expect strangers to ask him questions of a guide-book sort.

For all such questions his English system provides perfectly definite persons to answer.

If you want to know where the ticket office is, or where to take your baggage, or what time the train goes, or what platform it starts from, or what towns it stops at, and what churches or other buildings of interest are to be seen in those towns, there are porters and guards and Bradshaws and guidebooks to tell you, and it's they whom you are expected to consult, not any fellow-traveler who happens to be at hand.

If you ask him, you break the rules.

Had my friend said: "I am an American.