Growing roots

Last week I was on vacation in Spain. I was there for only a week, but that was enough for the barista at the closest coffee shop to remember how I like my coffee: "Oat milk, right? And sorry, we don't have sugar"^[1]. I had been there only 3 times before maybe, but she made the effort to remember that. This made me feel much cozier and it made me love Alicante even more.

And this got me thinking about how belonging to a community feels good, even if it usually means growing deep roots in a place. I used to travel a lot. In 2016 I spent 3 months on the road. In 2017 I took 43 flights.

But I don't miss that lifestyle anymore. I'm glad I found my place here in Oradea and I'm glad my place is here in Oradea^[2]. After 6 years living here, I have so many memories, most of them about being part in different communities.

There's the time when I got stuck in mud with the car in front of the house. My neighbor came out dying of laughter, but he helped me get the car moving. Today he's the person I drink coffee with most often.

There's the first presentation I gave about machine learning at the local tech hub. Now I have a lot of friends there. Together we've done many events. We hang out to play board games together. We've gone on hikes and we've even started side projects together.

Then there was the time when somebody from our church was quite sick and needed blood donations, so many of us went to the local donation center for him (and half of us were turned away for various reasons, but that's another story).

Most of the time engaging with people doesn't come easily to me, but I believe it's crucial and well worth the effort. I believe these ties that I build with different communities are what makes life worth living, and, some of them are even the point of life.

And I think it's almost impossible to build those ties when you don't have stability in one place. It takes a long time and much purposeful effort to be able to nourish these relationships. Sometimes I realize I've now lived here in Oradea for twice as long as in Zurich and I'm surprised. But then I think I'm not even halfway there to how close I can become with people here.