New Friends

“Let’s get a picture!” says Sonya, in the parking lot of Plitvice national park. We are going on to Zagreb, and they are heading back to Split.

As couples, we’d chatted a bit during our week on the boat, travelling through the islands on the Croatian coast. We’d shared a few meals. They went white water rafting on the Cetina River at the same time as us, although we were in different rafts. By coincidence, we’d ended up on the same tour of the waterfalls at Plitvice, a few days after our boat trip ended.

We share the picture, and contact information, on WhatsApp.

“If you’re ever in Australia…”

“If you’re ever on Vancouver Island…”

Will we ever see each other again? I don’t know. But the potential is there.

Another couple from Australia from the boat trip was in the same raft as us. We shared the same sense of adventure (he and I were the only adults who went under the waterfall!) but yet we did not make any attempt to share our contact information. Somehow, the potential wasn’t there.

I’ve written before about old friends, but much to my surprise I find that I have made quite a few new friends in the last few years. Not just in Barbados, where we lived for several years, but from all over.

When I toured through Israel and Jordan in January of 2019, I had a roommate who was the same age as me, and came from the same city in Canada as I lived in! We got along quite well, but we never contacted each other once we were back in Canada. Not so with my roommate from the Egypt part of my tour. Jan lives in Minnesota, but she has travelled with me on another trip, and we still chat regularly.

I met Nathalie at a gathering in Germany in 2019. We hit it off, and she offered to host me the next year, if I came to Switzerland.

The next year, however, there was no travel for anyone. That could have been the end of our potential friendship, as happened with the woman from Thessaloniki. I’d planned to visit her, after we had spent a flight from Vancouver to Istanbul together, including a long layover in a wine bar in Montreal. We emailed for a year or so, but when travel hadn’t opened up it gradually faded away, and we went on with our lives.

The same thing might have happened with Nathalie, but she asked me to proofread her LinkedIn profile before she applied for a new position as English was my first language, and her third. That led to ongoing online conversations about language, about sexism, about shared and different experiences from living in different countries.

We’ve visited Nathalie twice now, in Switzerland, and she has come to stay with us in both Barbados and Canada.

Closer to home, our neighbour Catharine has become a friend, introduced by her dog Kelly! Dog walks, meals out and at each other’s homes, heart to heart discussions— there’s something about both shared circumstances and similar senses of humour that connects us.

My mother had close friends she made when she was younger, and they were lifelong. Even as she got older she seemed to always be making a new friend, but they never lasted long. She liked an audience, but her concern never seemed to go the other way, and eventually the friendship would sour.

When we were planning a birthday party for her, when she was already living in a care home, we asked if there was anyone other than family who she would want there.

“Everyone I’d want to invite is dead,” she said, matter-of-factly.

I love my old friends. However, I’ve lost some: Shannon died, and over the years other friendships have not survived changed circumstances.

So how do you make new friends? First, you recognize the potential. Then you put in the effort. Though you might not always make a connection, you definitely won’t if you don’t try.

Will we keep in touch with the people we met hiking in Switzerland? Viktoria from Mexico, Joost from Netherlands, Herbert and Silke from Germany? Perhaps not, but we shared hikes, a rösti in a mountain hut, the alpenglow. Will Julia from New York ever contact me to discuss international travel with small children? Maybe not, but we enjoyed our conversation at the vineyard in Provence.

They say the best friend is an old friend. But they all have to start sometime, as new friends.