Friends in far away places

The perk of working in a global company is that you get to meet, work with and build relationships with people from other countries. That's incredibly useful since they offer you a fresh perspective on who you are and what you do, and in turn give greater insight into the society as a whole.

For example I've been told by Americans that Dutch people seem to have a tight and stable circle of friends built up, more or less when they enter the working life, and that it's quite a trying exercise to be friends with a Dutchman for a foreigner. Dutch teens might have gone off to college, or moved to a different city, but since everything in the Netherlands is roughly within one to two hours drive, Dutch people can still keep track of whomever they like to, without getting on a plane.

In the US it is far more likely that when a teen moves out to college, he or she's gonna be really, really far away. Forget about driving over in two hours. Sometimes there will be half a continent in between. Once an American moves to a different city, he has to build up his circle almost from scratch.

Size of country matters to the nature of relationships people in that country have. Because the Dutch relatively speaking have their friends within arms' length, friends in the Netherlands are more likely to have older - perhaps longer-lasting - relationships. Because of these older relationships, a Dutch circle of friends does not change much. Few people move away, few people join. For an American it seems less welcoming.

The Americans however are far more likely to completely build up completely new relationships as they move to new cities or states. Americans are more likely than Dutch to open up to new people, or at least build up a new friendship not based on lifetime or shared experiences, but more on shared interests and proximity. For a Dutch person that seems fake. How can anyone build up a tight relationship out of thin air, in just a short time frame, while Dutch people often take years to develop the same kind of trust?

Of course this does not take into account individual tendencies: Some Dutch travel lots, and invite more contact in this respect. Some Americans prefer to stick at home (perhaps they don't have the means to) and grow root. Some people are naturally open to others, others are more closed. The nature of one's profession allows one to be mobile and dynamic or not. But the nature of a person's relationships in any society will be influenced by the size of the country he lives in.