this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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I spent a few years in the US, coming from Scandinavia. It took several months before I was able to navigate the whole "strike up a conversation with anyone"-thing. The issue wasn't so much being "forced" into conversations (which I got used to fairly quickly) as it was knowing when these interactions were considered over by the other party. I'd often, unintentionally, overstay my welcome. The general vibe and attitude were also quite different.
The biggest shock was however moving back home. I'm originally from one of the larger cities in my home country, but ended up in a tiny village through a series of coincidences. Going from a multi-million US city to a tiny Scandinavian mountain village was rough. Went from a place filled with outgoing people to a place where the cashier in the local store still took me for a tourist after having lived there for a year. An almost impenetrable society. I've been here for a decade now, and have long since realized that I will always be "that guy from XYZ". On the plus side, it's nice not having to deal with people beyond my own family an coworkers. On the negative side I have almost no sense of belonging here outside of my wife's family who are all local.
You need to join a club or take a class. That is the Norwegian way of breaking the silence. Instant connection.
Same here in Switzerland. After university I moved to my new job and for a good while I basically had no friends here. The vast majority of the people I hang out with are either family, are from a club I joined, from the club I started or came "attached" to someone from those categories.
People from other countries are also much easier to get to know. After that it's Norwegians who have experience abroad. But clubs and classes definitely work.
Clubs are a good place to meet people for sure. :)
That whole local vs not is kind of crazy though. I know of a guy who's been here for 40 years, huge part of the local community, everyone knows him - and everyone still referes to him as "the guy from the north". I find it equal parts hilarious/sad-ish. I dread to think what it would feel like to be a foreigner here, and not just some guy who moved in from a city a few hours down the road. I get it though on some level, historically it's been a very isolated community, and even now getting here (or getting away) can be difficult, practically speaking, in the winter months.
Oof. I feel this one. I spent most of my childhood in - what we consider - a small city (10k people). My school class was like 20 kids with a few different ethnic backgrounds. Then we moved to a mountain town where the elevation (in meters) was a multiple of the population count, my class (including the neighboring villages) was 4 and there was exactly one family who didn't look like they were at least 20 generations Swiss.
My dad is a very outgoing person, passionate volunteer firemen (most towns here have their fire department on a volunteer basis), contributed to the town council, was pretty religious (BIG up there, when there was a mass during the day then all the classes from school attended) - but they literally were just happy to take his work but not give anything back. The protestant priest from the neighboring village checked in on our family (protestant) and him (catholic) more often than our "our" priest. My mom befriended another "immigrant" family who had been there for 10-20 years and basically had NO connections in town. My father made 1 good friend and 1 good acquaintance at work.
For us kids it was a lot easier. The other kids were welcoming and friendly and even the adults were somewhat accomodating to us. But I was approaching adulthood and started to experience this myself. Town tradition was that for christmas the oldest kids in primary school would dress up as the 3 magi and lead the younger ones around town to sing christmas songs. And they would also participate in the christmas mass. They were in a pickle that year as from a class of 4, half were protestant heathens. I was still expected to stand in the front of the church as ornament but when the edible paper was distributed I was rudely shoved away.