Starting the social cycle again
Travelling has the most amazing perks and it has some downfalls as well. The world is made of many many different cultures and all react to people in different ways – indifference, enthusiasm, curiosity, caution… And all will present many different faces to the passing traveller depending on whether the traveller is visiting or staying. My travels have taken me to places for short periods of time where I maybe temporarily working or visiting, and other times it has taken me to places where I stay longer. I have visited over 40 countries (barely) and all the continents during my lifetime and yet have moved to live in a new location only 7 times. And each time, it gets harder and harder…
It doesn’t matter if you move to live and work in a new place in a country foreign to your own or within the country you live, moving to a new village, town or city means abandoning your established network of friends and maybe family, and moving somewhere where you may not know a soul. How easy the transition into a new life in a new place can be, I find, depends on the nature of your move.
When I was younger, if was moving to new location to (say) pursue higher education, it is very easy to quickly become integrated in a circle of friends as you are thrust into a close knit group of people of similar age and all with a similar goal – get a degree and move on!
Ironically, moving to countries to work where I don’t speak the local language are also places to quickly form friendships. This is because I have usually moved there for work-related reasons, and there is a small community of ex-pats there, who also share the same circumstances as you, ie in a foreign place, no one speaks your native tongue and there is only a small group of people who do!
By far the hardest places to move to and start afresh are those where the locals speak my native tongue, ie English. The first time I moved to a new English-speaking city and had to start afresh without the crutch of a company or education institution network to fall back on was Denver, Colorado. But I was young, and at that stage, the Australian-American Chamber of Commerce was going strong in Denver and I quickly met transient Australians. As the years began to follow, I realise when moving to a new place, the transients are the ones you will probably befriend!
The next time I moved to a new place, many years later, I moved to the UK and was handicapped by a career which had just died (due to market forces beyond my control!), no money and no idea what my new career was going to be! I also found the UK to be quite decentralised – many businesses weren’t based in London, they were based all over the country – small island. But it was expensive to catch trains between cities to tote my resume! So that made it hard to settle down there as I couldn’t do what I’d been trained to do, didn’t know what I wanted to do next, and didn’t know if I was particularly attracted to any place in the UK to begin with. I ended up leaving and via a rather circuitous route, found myself in Sydney, Australia, another ‘new’ city.
I learnt three things in Sydney very quickly:
- My friends who over the years had loved my ‘exotic’ travels, didn’t particularly want to be friends with me on a day to day basis as they had their own lives
- It was far more difficult making new friends in your 30s than in your 20s.
- Many people at the new location are locals who grew up there and have strong family and friend networks. There simply isn’t any room in their life for a new friend.
I had friends when I moved to Sydney; it was the reason I moved there as I thought I could just stumble into a network of friends. But when I arrived, I was almost immediately kicked out of one circle because all the warm welcomes I’d received in the previous years when I passed through for a day or a week were so everyone could marvel at my travels. Living side by side with people in Sydney and experiencing the same trials and tribulations? Suddenly I was no longer a source of escape for that group of people; I’d lost my ‘exotic’ appeal!
I fell victim to the “Bridge Jone’s’ syndrome of being a singleton with another friend. A 12 year friendship collapsed almost immediately as my arrival coincided with said friend’s partner moving to Sydney. Suddenly I was a third wheel and no longer welcome as she was establishing herself in the world of couples. 12 years of friendship thrown out the window for a guy…
As to the Sydney natives, I found them to be polite, superficial, not overly friendly and very very cliquey. Over the years that followed, I made several friends, but they were transients – people who were only in Sydney for a job and invariably most left. In fact, it was becoming pretty common knowledge that most people who moved to Sydney, left within 5 years… I did manage to make some friends around the 4th year who were not transients, but took a long time! In the end, I lasted 5.5 years in Sydney.
The next time I moved to a new place, I moved to London in the UK. London is stuffed to the gills with transients. Even native Londoners take to transients – because their own friend network is constantly swelling and shrinking as friends gad off for work, business and pleasure in Europe. I think if I had not been so internationally transient the time I was there (ie working overseas more than I was living in London), I think within 6-12 months, I’d have a few friends. I was starting to make a few friends when I was there, but it was hard to maintain as I didn’t bop over the Continent from time to time, I went to the other side of the world for longer periods of time!
And now I am St John’s, Newfoundland, population just a shade over 100,600 people. After the bustling metropolis of nearly 8 million mad and neurotic Londoners, this was was a return to a much slower pace! I was assured that I was moving to the ‘friendliest place in Canada’ by many people. Everyone I spoke to who said they had been to Newfoundland or met people from there, said they were the friendliest people in the country, it was going to be easy… I thought it was amusing Canadians were even saying this because I find most Canadians to be very friendly.
And yet… I find at this (admittedly, early point in my move here), there are many similarities to my move to Sydney all those years ago… And why is this so? Read on…
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