For some, leaving friends behind is an emotional moment. Friends are an important part of everyone’s life. I am not talking about Facebook or Whatsapp friend’s, because those you carry along with you in your phone or laptop. The real contact, the everyday interactions of having a coffee with someone or going on a day trip with a friend.
People who travel with groups can make new friends with other travelers. But independent travelers like ourselves, is a different story. We have to make an extra effort to connect with the locals.
We found that we could connect with people in several ways. During our rushed travel in our earlier years, we would take the free guided tours that everyone is fond of. Invariably you meet someone who is on the same wavelength as you and friendship strikes. In our current situation, we do not have structured trips or routine. So how do we make friends and connect with locals?
We go for long walks every morning. Besides getting a cool start to a summer day, it is an excellent exercise. We do not plan our walks. We try different routes daily. During our walks, we are exploring the area, discovering new places to visit at our leisure later. This gives us an opportunity to ask people questions along the way, such as direction or explanation about a building structure interpretation of road signs etc.. Sometimes we get lucky and the person who is giving us information about the area, asks us where we are from and how long we are visiting etc.
In one such an instance, we met a lady last week. She was getting into her car to leave when we stopped to ask her what the big building that she came out of was. It turned out to be a large Hospital complex in Ghent. She explained the area, the hospital and the other residential buildings around. She said she had lived in Ghent for 25 years but had moved out of the city into a smaller town when she had her children. And also to be closer to her mother who lived there. Then we asked her how we could get to the Turkish quarter from there? Of course, we could have got on to Google Maps! But then we would not have this interaction with this lady. So she gave us some directions and then asked us where we were from. And so the conversation started. We openly told her our travel plans and she was surprised. She told us about her vacation that she had in Italy. And gave us her perspective of how the Belgian people live. We ended up chatting with her for over an hour. Before we parted we had exchanged telephone numbers, email addresses, and facebook contacts. I suggested to her that, since we are here for a few weeks, if she and her husband were free at the weekend we could meet again. With that, we left and carried on with our walk.
Two
days later we got a text message from her, inviting us to spend the Saturday with them. We were excited that she had contacted us and accepted her invitation. Saying, “Yes” and trusting people and your own instincts is very critical during travels. We met this couple on Saturday at 1 pm at Kouter where she had suggested. Kouter has a Sunday flower market and our apartment was very close to it. Some flower vendors were already there. Her husband had parked his car in the car park below. She introduced us to him and we exchanged pleasantries. Then he said that they thought we might like to go and see the World War I site “ Flanders Fields”. Ypres was a place we had on our agenda to visit. We were really lucky to have met these wonderful people. Not only did we spend most of the day with them and evening followed by dinner and did not get home till 11 pm.
To relate another instance, we were again walking in the evening looking into shop windows and generally wandering the streets of Ghent. We stopped in front of a real estate office to see the display of properties for sale and rent. Everything was written in Dutch. But we could decipher most of the language by now. Our vocabulary had certainly increased since we arrived. There was one word that we could not understand. While we were peering at this window, another man walked up to look at the pictures too! Of course, I turned to him and said, “please excuse me, but we are new here and do not understand this ( and I pointed to the text) can you explain why this advertisement says 40 sq m and 250 sq m?” So he said that the apartment was 40 sq m and the land on which the building was built was 250 sq m. That was the beginning of the conversation. He was as curious as us, so he asked us where we had come from? After telling him that we live in California, he told us he used to live in Delaware when he was working with Dupont. An initial interest sparked a friendship.
We
said goodnight to them and left after exchanging email address and phone numbers. Both of them wanted to meet with us again and told us to send them a message the following week as they were headed out to Champagne, France the next day, with friends to buy champagne from the wineries for the year! How exciting was that? So a week later I send them a text message and they said we could meet for a coffee at Belfort Stadt Cafe at 4.30pm. We arrived at the cafe on time just as they walked in. We ordered the coffee’s and talked for a good 2 hours. They gave us their perspective on life in Belgium. Both were born and had lived all their lives in Ghent. You could tell that they loved their city. We talked about the bicycling culture in Belgium. They asked us about all the places we had visited. Our one boat ride was left and they informed us that there was one from Ghent that went all the way to Brugge. They told us about their traveling experiences in Japan when they were living there as expats. Telling us about their favorite places to visit during their vacation, Spain. We knew that we had once again found someone who had similar interest as we did. The love of travel and meeting new people. It’s amazing that one does not have to look far during travels. It’s just a matter of not being shy and starting a conversation.