The anonymity of new friends

I had a surprisingly good lunch today with a relatively new friend. It was surprising in two senses. One, the Vietnamese food was really tasty, yet cheap; and two, we had a very honest, open, personal conversation. I know this girl from my writing course and this is the first time we've got together outside of class. I was slightly worried that we wouldn't have much to talk about throughout lunch since we don't know each other very well, but the opposite proved true. We skipped a lot of typical getting-to-know topics, which can be quite boring and moved quite naturally to talking very personally about our families, partners, work frustrations and plans for the future. My theory is that because we don't know each other's partner, friends or colleagues, and are somewhat unlikely to meet them in the near future, we felt safe to be very open. It was a really nice lunch and I appreciate her taking her lunch hour to share it with me.