In our new series, Citizen Expat, Megan Murray draws on her recent move abroad to interview women across the globe about their own expat experiences, including building community, connecting to a new culture, finding the best local spots, and the travel tips you need to know.
To kick off the series, we speak to a woman who lives and breathes the expat life – so much so, that she’s made her living out of it.
Samantha Wolfson moved from New York to Amsterdam eight years ago after falling in love with the city on a work trip. At the time, she travelled over half of the year curating music festival experiences, everywhere from Mexico to Australia, igniting her extraverted spirit and love for travel. Among the blur of far-flung locations, there was something about Amsterdam that just stuck. She couldn’t get its winding streets and laid-back attitude out of her head, and made the move in 2017, immediately reaching out to work contacts and friends of friends to be part of her ‘Sam’s Dinners’ experiences and to meet other ambitious, like-minded women.
A natural host with a passion for female friendship, Sam describes her love language as “bringing women together around a table,” and it wasn’t long before her regular dinners grew, often catering for 50 to 100, or even 150 people. While she couldn’t have dreamed at first that this hobby might become her career, as word got out about her gatherings, others wanted a way to join in and so, & The Table was born.
Now, Sam lives in the west of the city with her partner and (very large, very cute) dog, and has been working on & The Table for just over a year, which has professional hosts in over 10 countries, including Nigeria, Spain and Budapest. The format for each dinner is the same: six women who have never met come together around a dinner table and share stories of their lives connected by a theme. Her hope is to facilitate genuine connections and spark meaningful friendships, especially for women living in a new place.
Here, Sam shares her story of finding herself in Amsterdam, turning a dream into a business and connecting with locals, as well as her favourite spots to visit next time you’re in the city.
Let’s start at the beginning; what took you to Amsterdam?
My first job was producing branded sponsorships for music festivals which meant being on the road for nine months of the year. We basically followed the sun for the festival we were working on, spending two months in Mexico, a month in China, Australia and time in Europe. Summers were spent in Amsterdam at the HQ – I loved the city. The Dutch American Friendship Treaty visa allows you to start your own sole proprietorship and work underneath that. I applied and was successful, so thought it could be the perfect time to try somewhere new.
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Was it a difficult decision to leave home and start a new life, so far away?
It was a complicated period. I was coming out of an eight year relationship and I wanted a change, and to do something for me. I was scared to leave home but just had this sense that I should say yes and embrace the new. What didn’t make things any easier is that I’d grown close to someone in the Dutch team, who then broke it off three weeks before I moved. This probably didn’t help the initial rollercoaster of emotions – I was a messy 24 year old!
How did you begin building community in a new place?
My love language is hosting women around a table. I’m a conversationalist, and I genuinely enjoy hearing about other women’s stories, what they’re going through, and just getting to know them on a meaningful level. This is what I was looking for in Amsterdam, so I took matters into my own hands and started ‘Sam’s Dinners’ – dinner parties for women like me, which started at my place and grew as the idea took off. You could say that as a typical American I thought bigger was better, and tried tables of 50, 100 and 150, with the hope of bringing as many women together as possible. But, at the end of every event I just thought: ‘I hate this!’
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I didn’t have the time to truly connect with anyone; I was exhausted from cooking and my feet were swollen. Then the pandemic happened, so everything stopped, but it gave me the space to think about what I really wanted from these experiences, and I took the idea back to basics. I decided to focus on just six solo women sitting around a table; I sent out a newsletter and wrote on my blog about upcoming dinners with no way of knowing that within 12 weeks I’d have over 500 requests from women who wanted to join. I switched the name to & The Table and by July 2022, two of my regular guests approached me and offered to host as well, which quickly grew to 10, and so on.
What is & The Table?
I’m now running & The Table as a full-time business. The idea is to bring up to six women, who don’t know each other, around a table of an official host, with a set theme to guide the mood of the evening and a central question to kick off conversation. It started with me in Amsterdam and now runs across the US, UK, Canada, Europe and Africa.
Curation is key for us – we only work with hosts who have a beautiful space to hold their dinners, understand how to prepare and serve high-quality, aesthetically-pleasing food and have the people skills to make everyone comfortable. We work on a ticket request system so that hosts can choose who comes to each dinner, with the aim of connecting women who are likely to gel. We see & The Table as a place to start your own community, but not a community in itself. It’s about meeting people who understand where you’re at in life, and with whom you can share what you’re going through, and build connections that continue after the event.
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What do we need to know if we want to join a dinner or be a host?
You can search on our website for local dinners and apply to join an upcoming event, waiting for confirmation from the host. This is a good way to get a feel for what we do first, before applying to be an official host yourself. We’ve had over 700 applicants and only brought on 140 of them because it’s important that everyone who represents us nails every element of the experience.
We have a new feature about to launch which I’m really excited about, separate from our official tables. These will be called community tables and will allow our membership to connect in a more relaxed way, setting up coffees or cocktails themselves. I think these will really take off as they’re easier to organise and can happen more frequently, so check these out, too!
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You’re an expert on building community. What advice do you have for other expats looking to do this?
My main rule at the beginning was not to let negative experiences deter me. There will be times when you reach out to someone who you’ve briefly met and they just don’t seem interested. There will be times when you go out for a drink with new friends and it doesn’t click, but you have to think: ‘okay, on to the next.” That’s life! You never know what someone’s going through, so don’t take it personally and keep looking for your people. To build on this – I live by a piece of advice someone once gave me: ‘don’t take criticism from anyone you wouldn’t take advice from.’ When you’re building connections, you’ll have to keep putting yourself out there and that can be tough. But, if you don’t know or trust someone well enough to take their advice, you can’t let anything negative they have to say about you affect you. Just ignore them and move on.
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I also believe that one or two people can’t give you everything that you want from your life, so building a connective web is the way to have fulfilling friendships. For example, I have one friend who I work out with every Tuesday, we grab a coffee and catch up for an hour. I don’t see her at any other point in the week – she’s my workout friend and it suits us perfectly. Find people who give you different things and don’t put all the pressure on just a few ‘best friends’, expecting them to be everything.
Anything we should know about moving to Amsterdam?
Be conscious of your role in what is now a very overcrowded city. Locals can feel sensitive to non-locals working for international companies (who can afford to pay them higher wages and secure more central apartments), which is pushing the local community out of the city. I’d also say, avoid living in the centre anyway – something I wish I’d known when looking for my first place! It’s full of tourists (particularly stag and hen groups) so find neighbourhoods away from the busiest parts.
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While Amsterdam is an English speaking city, I would make an effort to learn the language if you can. True locals speak in Dutch and there’s a tension when you can’t understand, so it will make connecting with the community easier, and make you feel more at home. Something I love is how community spirited Amsterdam is – neighbours know each other and are always helping one another out. It’s totally different to New York where I wouldn’t meet anyone in my building. Here, people make an effort to leave welcome notes and share phone numbers in case you need anything.
How did you begin discovering the city as a local, not a tourist?
I started by putting my phone away every time I went out and about. If meeting someone or visiting a gallery, I’d look at the route and try my absolute hardest not to check my phone. Yes, you’ll get lost occasionally but that’s how you find the nicest streets and smaller bars and restaurants. Locals themselves are really the key to finding the best places. If you can find native friends or people who have lived in the city for a long time, they’ll show you where to go away from the tourists and crowds.
Next time we’re in Amsterdam, where are the local spots to visit?
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For a coffee in the daytime, Louf on Bilderdijkstraat is a beautiful bakery with a few small tables and a bench to sit outside on and catch some sun. The coffee is great and the baked goods are as you’d imagine – incredible. If people watching is your thing, another spot for sitting outside is IKARIA coffee kiosk at Bilderdijkstraat. For dinner, my recommendation would be Wils if it’s a special occasion; it has creative dishes and a Michelin Star. If low-key is more your thing, Stacks Diner is all about home-style cooking and really delicious.
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Any Questions or Tips to add?