Being a traveler who lives abroad, the answer is simple: “Where are you from?”
As a traveler, I can’t grasp tribal / jingoistic people’s obsession with where one fell out of one’s mom, and it always feels a bit xenophobic — as though, noticing one’s foreignness, there is a rush to determine whether one is one of the tolerable foreigners or one of the really bad ones.
As an introvert, the question offends my preference to be talked to by people who have something to say, and to be left alone by people who are just playing out social programming with the objective of breaking silence that they find objectionable (but which I, as a rule, find delightful.) (Even being highly introverted, I can converse for hours with someone who has something to say on a topic that is neither themselves nor me — i.e. I love ideas but hate small talk and interaction for the sake of interaction.)
Plus, it just gets annoying being asked the same question sixty times a day when I’m in more remote parts — a question, the answer to which will be forgotten in three minutes and is merely sound for sound’s sake. In the unlikely event that one hopes to have an actual conversation with me, one must start with something that is not your culture’s default socially programmed question. One must get to at least the second most commonly asked question, a question varies from person to person (in my case, it’s: “Why are you such an asshole?”)
Tiger Riding for Beginners 
totally with you on this; getting older I tend to play the person who asks. In, North Wakes, I once confused a policeman who took my l/h drive fiesta for a sign of foreignness when I had lived in his neighboring village for 2 yrs and I was even on the electoral roll. – Sometimes I bore the person asking to sleep with my long list where I was born, where I have lived (at least 5 places) in Ger, before coming to the UK; but recently, I have become a bit more patient with foreign nationals e.g. as taxi drivers. In those cases, after a quick reply I focus on how they are feeling in their adopted home… I guess, apart from getting older, I am just so happy as a nomad, the questions don’t bother me, š
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That’s the attitude. I try to be reasonable about it, but in remote part it gets out of hand.
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