Friendship is a subjective term, whether you want to perceive your friends as those who trust you, who support you, who go out with you for a soda or wine, who urge you to do cool things or with whom you just go out to share a slice of cake on the dullest day of the year. I don't think it needs to be added, but you need friends and people around you, especially if you already live in an environment where you feel a bit alien.
Well, as a student it's a bit simpler. You ask for an assignment, hand out a stroopwafel or a little soda, a cigarette and you already have someone to feel less alienated with. Most of my friends here in the Netherlands I met at the hostel or at university and from there the rest is history. It's just as convenient to meet people to go to parties, to the famous 'coffee', to borrel-uri, to study dates, to the library, to join a student association and so on. Here are some cool places: (Amsterdam University Library, Coffee and Coconuts, Vondelpark, Cafe MidWest, Breakfast Club, Public Space, OBA).
I think the description I gave above simplifies the process quite a bit, especially if you are in an international environment where cultural, language and environmental differences are quite easily felt. After all, making Romanian friends doesn't require much effort compared to international or Dutch ones. The best advice I can give is to be yourself. You can't go wrong with your own passions, likes, hobbies, experience sets, etc. But then again, maybe I oversimplified the process with advice that everyone knows.
As a first piece of advice, try to break out of your comfort zone and go out for a coffee with a colleague you are talking to during your class break. No one turns down a coffee!
Then try saying yes to college events, even if you think you're a little too cool for them: movie nights, meet-ups with students, clubs, game nights, maybe a party and so on. Afterwards, maybe you can try to strike up a conversation with someone, ask them about their life, the country they come from, how they like the Netherlands, and kind of what brought them here. Go to free entry events, conferences about anything you want to know or learn about and get talking to people. Westerners call it networking, but I see it as an opportunity to meet cool people.
The simple international student status you have in the Netherlands is a pretty good reason to bond with someone. And yes, I say this from personal experience. Among so many ethnic and cultural differences, I think that's what most obviously binds a friendship. The first hardships of life as a foreigner in the Netherlands are felt the same way by everyone, especially students. How hard it is to find accommodation, university, studying in another language, moving away from home, lack of familiarity, are all common things we share regardless of country of origin. The most difficult is the first step, the first conversation, the first laugh at a common joke and from there it all becomes quite natural. You can start by sharing Romanian customs, jokes or traditional ironies, and then receive similar information in return, of course from a different cultural background. It is also a great opportunity to discover and get to know the diversity of the world you live in? I think not.
Coming back to the facts, the most appropriate motto would be "to put yourself out there". I know how hard it is to say an idea that you would so easily put into words in Romanian and try to keep its contextual meaning in English in a conversation. It's not the end of the world though! It's ok if you get confused, if you're asked for the 100th time "I'm sorry, what?" to what you've already repeated so many times before, if you in turn ask 100 more times and so on. Nobody cares that much about the details. Why am I so sure about that? Well, I tried to explain to a friend in Ecuador how the education system works in our country, specifically the Baccalaureate exam in computer science. The curiosity revolved around a written exam on a paper for a subject that clearly didn't naturally have its purpose in teaching you to write anywhere other than on a computer. "What do you mean on paper? As in coding on a sheet of paper?". Yes... great was the surprise to hear that an exam where the expectation is to write code snippets happens on paper. Culture shock? Horror? Pity for a country that trains its future engineers in this way? That's probably what she felt. Still, she laughed and we continued the conversation on our way to tea in the centre of Amsterdam.
The bottom line would be to be open to socializing with a person who comes from a country other than Romania. Get to know, explore and don't assume from the first second that there is an impossible barrier to cross in relating to someone. Understand that at first it may well take more effort to be seen as a close friend, to empathise with their problems and experiences, or to simply get into their good graces.
An article by Ambra Mihu
Ambra is a young student in Amsterdam in 2022 studying Computer Science. Favourite activities include taking a telescope to the park in the middle of the night to look at the stars, cooking, hiking, reading and travelling. PS: She is a curious nature who loves to debate on everything from food and fun to quantum physics.
