One of the main take-aways from travelling is unlearning a lot of the things engrained into you. Some of mine were (and to an extent continue to be – don’t worry mum!): Don’t stray off on your own. Don’t talk to strangers. Never get into someone’s car. Don’t accept food from someone… The list of rules continue, and most come with a cautionary tale often resulting in one’s brutal murder. But what if, after exploring on your own you get to talking to a nice person, and they later offer to drive you somewhere? Or what if you’re out camping in the middle of nowhere without any mode of transportation and you need a ride back into town? Or what if some guy fishing for crabs on the deserted rocks in Jericho Beach, Vancouver rips open a pack of dried mangos and kindly offers you some? Or what if some guy sporting the biggest and raunchiest mustache pulls up exclaiming he has tons of puppies in his white van that you’ve just got to check out? These are all fair situations in which there is simply nothing to do but to throw up your hands in ultimate defensiveness, confirm that there is truly nobody keeping tabs on you, and jolt “YEAH!”.

I am (partly) joking of course, but there is something to say about the value of strangers. There is a saying that goes “every stranger is a friend you haven’t met yet” – at least, I would assume that is a saying – and there is truth to that. This isn’t to suggest that every person out there is one you have to have in your life and there continue to be situations where walking away is the best option. Like, stepping into a white van because the owner attests to a bunchload of puppies cowering in the back, is probably one of those situations. Once, someone I had just met ten minutes ago asked whether I would like to join him in his schoolbus converted home across America. I must admit I gave the offer some thought, but the idea of being stuck in the middle of nowhere with an older guy whose previous travel companion was a goat was one even I couldn’t quite get myself over – besides, I had a plane to catch two weeks later. But overall, most people are pretty nifty. And kind. And caring. And giving. Americans, and people eventually relocating to the U.S., are so incredibly giving. The U.S. is generally quite lucky to attract the people that it does.

I have found that there is a certain disconnect between the American representation abroad (especially presented by the tourist you meet in, say, Amsterdam), and the way they truly are. Before people get on me for being factually incorrect, I must add that I have predominently stuck to larger metropolitan areas which are considerably more liberal – or in the case of the current election cycle, undecided or simply unattached to either party. I have yet to venture deeper into Trump Land as large swaths of thinly population areas are generally known, but from Americans I have heard that even in for instance the South I will find that people are genuinely nice. Additionally, as much as I would like to believe that the people make a country, this is unfortunately not the case in the U.S. where the “common man” is hardly represented in politics, and it is instead big money making most of the decisions. The global views we hold on the United States as a country do not match the way people actually are.

Over time, I have found that a high level of trust makes for a better experience. As a Dutch person who has grown up in the east of the country (my hometown has a sheer population size of 30 thousand – 30 times smaller than San Francisco, and about a 125 times smaller than Los Angeles) I have generally come to trust the people around me. When first visiting the U.S. I became so ultimately aware that this is very much not a thing here. Especially in the darkening hours of the day, there is an irrational part of your brain that sees in every stranger a rapist, a murderer, a drug courier, or some other plethora of chargeable crimes. What is especially weird is the realisation that people will think the same about you. When passing someone, there is sometimes such a tension in the air that it would truly cut as sharply as a blade (as the Dutch would say). I have had to physically stop myself from blurting out “I’m good people!” and instead force upon my poor passer-by suspended eye contact and a simple smile. Now that I think of it, perhaps that didn’t make matters any better.

Overall, though, there are good things that come from trust. I think it is just important to set certain paramaters and expectations on what trust means to you – and how one can “earn” it. In Quebec, when making a trip out to their famous waterfall, I met this woman soaking up the rays of sun that warmy settled on her face. Once she noticed me keeping my distance so as not to disturb her from the moment of serenity she seemed to have created for herself, she invited me over to enjoy the view together. We quickly got to talking, a combination of broken English on her side and broken French on mine, and bonded over our shared love for the hills surrounding us to the plains that stretch along Canada. She owned a van and loved to travel on her own, something I could relate to. As we talked, I felt trust nestle its way between us and create a bond that hadn’t existed five minutes before. We exchanged numbers and she told me to reach out if I was in need of any recommendations or would like to hang out later.

I held on with texting her for a whole day – the rational part in my brain warning me about everything that could possibly go wrong: a murder, a kidnap, a dissapearance. How well did I really know her after all? And how well did she know me? But ultimately I trusted my gut and excitedly reached out the next morning. She picked me up an hour later, accidentally driving by the first time around which made us both explode in a nervous giggle as I entered the car a few minutes later. We spent the day driving around an artisan island, getting our hands on whatever free tasters that came our way – three glasses of wine, a small sachet of homemade candy (in exchange, we had to watch an explanatory video on its creation), some freshly distilled liquor, and some other things that must have slipped my memory in the passage of time. We ended the night in fashion with some local beers I acquired and a long drag of Canada-grown weed. I met her son and her cat, and I saw with my own two eyes the van with which she had made her way through Canada (and back).

I am incredibly fortunate to have had that experience, not only because it was a truly wonderful day (and one I absolutely needed at the time, as I had some trouble adjusting after a month in the U.S.), but because it has generally made me more trusting of the people I meet along the way. Many months later, I met the nicest man on a beach in San Francisco. He had just spent the past thirty minutes swimming in what to me seemed to be unbearably cold conditions (as he had done for the past 24 years, I later found out), when our paths crossed and we struck up conversation. We admired the bay in front of us, the seals popping up their slick heads every now and then, the snowy egret calmy working its way down the shoreline in search of fish and other small verterbrates, and the beautiful white American pelicans dipping their beak into the water mid-flight to scoop out pray. We discussed American politics, San Francisco, our previous jobs, our travels, the Netherlands, and more – easily shifting from one topic to the next. Over the span of our one hour conversation and the next day that we spent together exploring different museums, view points across the city and beautifully curated gardens and greenhouses, we both gained a new friend and learned of lives completely beyond ourselves. After all, all friends were strangers you once hadn’t met yet.