The 8-day overland safari that I signed up for a few years ago sounded promising. The itinerary would take our group through South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe with stops in some of the most famous national parks in southern Africa, two nights in the Okavango Delta and a day on the Zimbabwean side of Victoria Falls. All along the way, we were supposed to have a chance to see a wide variety of big game, including elephants, leopards, lions and buffalo. If that sounds amazing then you, like I, may have missed the key word overland. As in, driving over land in a modified tractor trailer for ten hours a day for eight straight days with people who, by and large, neither showered nor shut up.
To add insult to injury, an entire week passed before most of our group saw a live animal (exclusive of the spring hare that two desperate guides at a nature preserve in Botswana tried to pass off as “something special to the region”). The starry-night campsites we had been promised turned out to be nothing more than gravel parking lots, which our truck unceremoniously bounced into each night after hours upon hours of driving. Our tour guides, two Zimbabwean men, failed to recognise that the twenty people they were hauling aroud actually paid for the trip. Like two deadbeat dads, they put in the bare minimum, pretending to ignore basic questions about our itinerary and preparing lunchtime meals that consisted of leftover spaghetti noodles with sliced hot dogs.
The only person more underwhelmed than I was by this whole experience was Mirjam, a Swiss woman who was rightfully indignant about having paid for a luxury-level tour and being served a budget safari instead. She was not amused by the guides who shared no information and the nature preserves that were suspiciously short on animals. She did not want hot dogs in her noodle salad nor did she believe that we “just missed” a whole herd of giraffes. She was not afraid to say so, which I very much appreciated. I was still a squeaky wheel, but for once, I wasn’t the squeakiest wheel – and for that I was thankful.
(Read past posts on the safari here and here and here.)
But that saying about terrible trips is true: the worst vacations make the best stories. Mirjam and I have no shortage of material from our road trip through southern Africa. I mean, you put an Israeli backpacker and a clueless Asian-American med student in close proximity to a wealthy middle-aged Swiss couple for eight straight hours and the dialogue will pretty much write itself. Mix in profound disappointment about not seeing a single big cat and the horror of learning that some people in Botswana are still treating chlamydia with dried leaves and you got yourself a real party.
In the case of Mirjam and me, the worst trips also make for the best friends. Eight long, hot, uncomfortable, boring days in a truck gave us a crash course in companionship. By the time we parted ways, we had exchanged contact information, connected on social media and promised to meet again in the future. A few months later, when I found myself in Switzerland for a hiking trip with two other friends, I invited her along. Together, we dazzled with stories about bunnies in parking lots and spaghetti for breakfast and our fellow Israeli tourist who spent the majority of the daily ride unpacking his giant backpack and telling us the story of every item in it. By the time we left, no one – and I mean no one – wanted to take an overland safari. But we were also, all four of us, new friends.
Mirjam is but one example of the friends I’ve made on the road. There’s also Nikki, the Scottish girl I met on a tour of the Great Barrier Reef who later invited me to join her on a road trip on the South Island of New Zealand. Brady, the man in the Joy Division t-shirt who asked me if he could borrow my MacBook charger in a Fiji hotel lobby – whose professional, personal and musical path I crossed probably a hundred times before that chance encounter. There are people I met in airport cab lines who I ended up joining on walking tours and people I met on walking tours who I then shared taxis to the airport with. There are friends of friends and family members of friends who invite me to dinner and offer me rides and insist on giving me the keys to their apartment. The farther I traveled, the friendlier people got.
Meeting people while traveling isn’t such an interesting phenomenon. Anyone will tell you that making friends on the road is easy. You meet fellow tourists at bars and restaurants, in museum gift shops and day tours. You trade stories and share drinks and before you know it, you have a plan for the next day. Sometimes, the locals get involved. Bartenders and servers offer recommendations or directions and some welcome the opportunity to be their city’s unofficial ambassador, if only for a day. If you’re doing it right, you leave every city with a short list of people you met and the places you will go.
But making friends closer to home seems to be much more of a challenge – especially if you’re over the age of 30. Somehow, once you’re back in the quiet lanes of life, it’s harder to start conversations and offer invitations. Everyone is already set up. Social circles are formed, schedules are full and no one wants to take a chance on someone new. There are no tour groups with which to mingle, no day trips to widen your circle, no plates of overcooked pasta to commiserate over. That’s probably all fine and good if you’re one of the people whose time is tight. But for newcomers, it’s here – in the everyday – that we struggle to connect.
More accurately, I struggle. It seems downright preposterous: I have a collection of friends around the world, but have only managed to make a single one between Helsinki and Munich (excluding those I have met through my boyfriend). I have a network that reaches from Tel Aviv to Melbourne to Toronto to Hong Kong, but stops just meters from my doorstep. I can get a list of personalised, local recommendations for virtually any city in Europe in a matter of hours, but I cannot find someone to meet me for dinner in Munich.
In a way, I get it. In making friends at home, the stakes are higher. There are consequences to opening the door to the wrong person: the potential awkwardness of retreating if things don’t work out; navigating the boundaries between work and pleasure for people met on the job; the minefield that is making friends through the network of your significant other. It’s enough to make anyone think twice about adding someone new – let along someone foreign and eccentric – to the group.
But even if I’m the new oddball in town, I know I’m not the only one having trouble meeting new people. Making friends is something that seems to get harder as you get older. Most people don’t want it that way – they just don’t know how to change it.
After thinking about how to make local friends quite a bit, I decided that the answer is pretty obvious. The way to meet people at home is to do it exactly the way I would while traveling – which is to say, I should just show up to new places, ask questions and make conversation. Then, when the other person says something that sounds mildly interesting, I should respond with, “Well that sounds cool. Let’s do that!”
Go ahead and laugh, I don’t care. That’s exactly how I found myself in the fourth seat of a Kia Sorento on its way to visit a koala zoo in New South Wales and ice swimming with a handsome stranger in Finland and wine tasting in Toronto (yes, Toronto).
Who’s laughing now?
Lately, I have begun putting this plan into action in Helsinki, by which I mean I started chatting aggressively with people in spin class. I also asked the barista at Starbucks if there is a Sephora in town and, if not, how can she look so amazing. I offered my opinion to a man trying on sunglasses, who turned out to not speak any English. It worked – in the sense that one of those interactions resulted in an invitation to Zumba class and I now have a list of off-brand cosmetics retailers in Finland.
Of course, part of my advantage is that I’m foreign. When I smile at people I recognize on the streets of Helsinki but never technically met or attempt small talk with the same cashier at the grocery store, I can hide behind my Americanness if things get awkward. I have license to do things differently because I am different.
For the most part though, I find there’s no need for excuses or explanation. In the world of screens and texts, most people seem to welcome human interaction. Even the people with friends and families and full schedules seem flattered by the idea that a perfect stranger finds them worth talking to. The tactic works in quiet places like Helsinki just as well as hardened New York City. I say that based on how many times I see my friends happy-tweet about how a new barista in Midtown remembered her order.
The barista might just be good at her job – or she might be opening the door to something else. Make small talk, ask her about her weekend, see what she’s up to… this is how friendships on the road start. Keep saying yes… to everything but an 8-day overland safari.
I love this! It is a lot easier to bond when you’re stuck with someone for several hours every day. That’s how high school works. It doesn’t take much to put down your phone and talk someone up in the elevator. My social anxiety spikes just thinking about it, but really, what is there to lose?
Nothing to lose at all, really. And yes, that is most definitely how high school and college works… every year/semester you get exposed to a whole new bunch of people and have the chance to get to know them. Afterwards, you kind of have to make your own opportunities. thanks for stopping by and good luck!
I am an extreme extrovert and talk to everyone but I am also finding it hard to make friends or even friendly acquaintances. People seem afraid to connect for fear of being “stuck” with someone. Sad
They do, sometimes – and that’s understandable, in a way. But I think they are more the exception than the norm… happy chatting.