It seems like an absolute dream, right? Travel the world forever! Over the past years, more and more people choose to leave home and choose freedom, often with laptop, to keep up with work on the way. With technology developing quickly, this lifestyle brings opportunities for both travelers and companies. Travelers have the opportunity to be wherever they like, and companies save money on office costs and can cover many time zones with employees or freelancers being all over the world.
This sounds perfect, but has its downsides too. Being on the road for a long time can have a big impact on our mental health. Many digital nomads and long term travelers experience stress, feel homesick or get lonely after a while. Especially for those who travel fast and move to new places regularly, it can be a challenge to find people along the way to connect with.
Although making real friends may be difficult in a short period, having a nice community of people around to work with, go on trips with and share daily challenges with, can make a huge difference in the way nomads handle their eventful way of living. Creating this is not always as hard as we may think!
There are many easy ways to find people with similar interests who would be happy to meet up, share a coffee and be your friend for the time you are around.
Photo: Anda Cowork, Granada
We have created a list of your four easy ways to meet people on your travels as a digital nomad:
1- Join a co-working space
Are you working during your travels? Then a coworking space may be the ideal place for you to find the community you are looking for. Besides a comfortable workspace (which saves you lots of stress chasing WiFi) a coworking space will most likely invite you for many interesting activities, workshops and you will be able to meet both locals and people with a similar lifestyle to yours. While non-digital-nomads or remote workers probably won’t understand some of your experiences and challenges, your community at a coworking space will fully understand your lifestyle and you will find it easy to connect with them.
2- Sign up for Meetup
Have you ever used Meetup? This is an amazing worldwide platform that offers people the opportunity to organise get togethers for people with all possible fields of interests and hobbies. From hiking groups to yoga classes to networking events, chances are good that you will be able to find a ‘meetup’ in your field of interest, in your city. You can sign up on the platform and join events for free or for a small charge. Would you like to organise your own events through Meetup? You can easily set up your own account for a small monthly fee.
3- Facebook groups
Have you seen the huge amounts of Facebook groups that are created for digital nomads, entrepreneurs, freelancers and remote workers?
Many cities have an active Facebook group specific for their city, or continent. Great examples are Digital Nomads Granada and Digital Nomads around Europe.The largest groups are the worldwide ones, like Digital Nomads Around the World and Global Digital Nomad Network. Besides being a platform for great advice and interesting stories, posts like ‘I’m moving to a new city, who wants to meet up?’ are incredibly common in these groups. If your destination of choice has WiFi, you will most probably be able to find a fellow nomad in one of the Facebook groups that chose your destination too – and would love to meet up.
4 – Connect to your own network
If you are a frequent traveler and use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or any other form of social network, it may be a great idea to announce to your network where you are and where you will be going soon. A simple question like ‘I’m going to be in Granada between January and March 2019.
Who can I meet for a coffee?’ can result in the great discovery that a friend, or a friend of a friend, may be there too! Connections with your own network will often be the best ones, as you are simply more likely to get along with a friend of a friend than with someone you don’t have any connection with.
At Anda Cowork we try to promote a nice mix of local and international coworkers. We often welcome digital nomads, freelancers and travelers to our community and organise regular events that help nomads integrate and feel at home in Granada. For nomads who would like to focus on their mental health just a little bit more, we offer regular yoga and mindfulness classes that will help you find the peace of mind you need to adapt smoothly into a new place and culture. Would you like to meet us and visit Anda?
We would love to hear from you. Please, send us an email to hello@andacowork.com or send an Whatshap +34 958273889