Strangers Became Family

I had been in Amsterdam for four months before I had a real conversation with anyone outside of work. I was polite, professional, functional. But I was also profoundly lonely in a way I didn’t know how to explain, even to myself.

It was a Tuesday evening. I had gone to a neighbourhood event — one of those multicultural dinners where everyone brings a dish and nobody quite knows anyone — mostly because I had nothing else to do and my apartment was starting to feel like a cell.

I sat next to a woman from Indonesia named Dewi. She was also there alone. We started talking about the food — specifically about how Dutch cuisine, as wonderful as the Dutch are, can sometimes feel a little beige. We laughed. We ate. We talked for three hours.

She introduced me to her friends: a Nigerian engineer, a Colombian graphic designer, a Dutch woman who had married a Tunisian man and spoke four languages fluently. Within weeks, we were having dinner every Sunday. Within months, I had a group of people who knew my name, who checked in when I was quiet, who came to help me move apartments without being asked.

What strikes me now is how much courage it takes to say hello to a stranger when you are tired and homesick and have already been rejected by a city a hundred small times. That one conversation — with Dewi, over questionable bitterballen and good wine — changed the entire texture of my life in the Netherlands.

Amsterdam gave me a career. Dewi and our table of strangers gave me a home.