I've been fortunate to choose destinations where a distant family member or long-lost friend happen to live - and are close by when I first arrive. Others aren't so fortunate and, hurried overseas at the whim of their job and/or better half, are faced with the prospect of fitting in fast or looking forward to an uncertain future.
Back in 2010 (was it really that long ago?), I wrote about my own struggles with trying (and failing) to fit in. I've learned a lot about myself since then and the coping strategies and mechanisms at my disposal upon arriving somewhere new. One resource that often comes highly recommended is InterNations, an expatriates community for people living and working abroad.
I usually shudder at the thought of expat meet-ups, groups of lost souls reminiscing together about the motherland. However, InterNations is first and foremost an online community - you can join the regular meet-ups if you want, but you can also use it to connect with friends and business contacts online. Less pushy and more 'take us as you find us' - that'll always get my vote. And because you can only join by invitation, there's a higher level of personal trust where privacy is protected - again, all good with me.
Co-founder Malte Zeeck offered to talk about how his life story contributed to the creation of InterNations. Here he is on how it all began.
People often ask me how I came up with the idea for InterNations, the community for expatriates and global minds. The answer is simple: I love travelling, discovering new places and meeting people from other cultures. If you have the opportunity to see the world, to live and work in many different countries, this can be one of the most challenging but also the most rewarding experience in your life, and you should definitely make the most of it. And that’s exactly what InterNations is about: It helps the global citizens of today to connect, to exchange information, to stay in touch and organize meet-ups wherever they are in the world.
The idea for InterNations is directly linked to my own life story. Ever since spending a high school year in the United States, I’ve never looked back. I went on to study economy and film at universities in Switzerland, Italy and Brazil, and because my appetite for exploring the world still wasn’t satisfied, I worked as a flight attendant during my studies. After graduating, I ventured into the world of TV journalism, as it seemed like the perfect opportunity to combine my love for traveling and my passion for meeting people from different cultures. I worked for various TV stations shooting documentaries in countries such as India, Brazil and Spain.
Malte Zeeck, InterNations co-founder
During all this time spent traveling and working in different countries, I soon realised that it’s the people that matter most. I love meeting new people and introducing them to other people I know, but I also want these personal relationships to last through time and space, if you know what I mean. The fact that I might be living in Australia next year shouldn’t mean that I will never see or hear from my friends in Germany again. On the contrary, maybe they could even help me find my feet “down under” by introducing me to some of their friends or business contacts over there. This is how I believe globalisation should work, and this is how InterNations works. It’s a global community with a local approach.We currently have more than 430,000 members in nearly 300 Local Communities worldwide and are thus the biggest global network for expatriates and “global minds”. What is more, we handpicked each of our 430,000 members to ensure that the contacts you make through InterNations are trustworthy and valuable. Our members include diplomats, journalists, managers of multinational companies, entrepreneurs, members of NGOs, and of course their partners and families. Together, these people make up a network that spans the whole world and can take you under its wing wherever you go.
The other factor that played into the idea for InterNations was the tedious Internet search that preceded every move abroad. It’s not only that you used to have to build up a new network of friends and contacts every time you moved to a different place, you also had to spend hours sifting through reams of information from various, often slightly dodgy sources on the Internet. This is all in the past now. When I, together with my co-founders Philipp von Plato and Christian Leifeld, thought up InterNations, we not only wanted it to be a network for expats, but also a valuable source of information.
So we came up with the plan to produce the Expat Magazine and our Country and City Guides. The former is a collection of articles on general topics revolving around the expat lifestyle. Its various categories, ranging from culture shock to working abroad, cover many aspects of expat life and help people deal with the challenges arising from such a nomadic life style. The Country and City Guides, as their name suggests, provide location-specific information. So if you know that your next expat assignment will take you to Sydney, you can search for that destination in our Guide section and read up on everything related to living in Sydney, which can be extremely useful for your preparations.
The Sydney InterNations Community
Our Local Community for expats in Sydney currently has around 3,500 members. It is coordinated by two volunteers, our local InterNations Ambassadors Axel from Germany and Marina from Russia. They organize one official InterNations event per month in various locations across the city. Our members use the events to network and to socialise. The events are a great opportunity for newcomers to make some contacts in the expat community because everyone there is usually very friendly, open and happy to meet new people.
The motto of InterNations events is “Nobody stands alone” - after all, we’ve all been in a similar situation before!
Thanks, Malte. If you're interested in joining the InterNations community, please leave a comment below and I'll gladly send you an invitation so you can start to connect globally with other like-minded souls wherever you are in the world. Alternatively connect with me on Twitter at @russellvjward.
Have you experienced organisations like InterNations and were your experiences positive? Are you aware of other similar resources out there?