‘This is so far outside my comfort zone.’ On Friday evening, a Polish woman steps inside Tables and Chairs on Breestraat. Outside, the rain is bucketing down. Inside, an evening full of encounters with complete strangers awaits. ‘I’ll have a glass of white wine, please!’
Throughout the evening, people from Leiden ranging in age from twenty to thirty-five trickle in. They are all hoping to meet someone they click with. Organiser Linde Teunissen (26) from Hengelo is ready to welcome everyone at the entrance. ‘Hi!’, she greets every rain-soaked visitor. ‘I’m Linde; it’s lovely to have you here!’
She is the organiser of this so-called friendship speed-dating event. ‘The idea is to give people an accessible way to find a friend’, she explains. ‘Instead of dating to find a partner, we’re dating to make friends. I thought it was strange that something like this didn’t already exist.’
Openly looking for a partner is perfectly normal these days, but admitting that you’re looking for new friends appears to be a lot more complicated. According to Teunissen, there is still a taboo surrounding loneliness. And this is evident tonight as well: the participants are eager to share their stories, but would rather not give their full names.
The Polish woman who ordered the white wine knows how difficult it is to build up a new circle of friends somewhere new. Around 2011, she moved to Leiden for work. She had to leave her friends behind, hundreds of kilometres away.
‘It’s not that I don’t have any friends’, she emphasises. ‘I just don’t have anyone here in Leiden I can ring up for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. And that does make you feel a bit lonely.’ Sometimes it makes her feel as though everyone except her is out having fun. ‘You can scroll all day long and everyone only posts the perfect picture.’
Paradoxically, it is also Instagram that brought her to the event this evening. ‘I’m a bit nervous, but also very excited.’
Three young men walk in. They have not bought tickets, but they would like to take part. Teunissen has to turn them away. ‘I match all the participants with each other in advance. I do this based on a questionnaire they fill in after buying their ticket.’
Two others who did buy tickets in advance, fail to show up. It is not uncommon for participants to drop out. ‘There was one girl who said she was really scared. I tried to reassure her, but she disappeared after going to the toilet. Later, she told me she’d decided to go home because she just couldn’t handle it.’
There are six rounds, lasting ten minutes each. ‘Everyone has been given a card that tells them who they’ll be meeting next and at which table. There’s no need to worry about awkward silences, because we have jars full of conversation starters ready!’ Teunissen tells the participants encouragingly. ‘I thought of that while travelling’, she explains. ‘I was in Guatemala and asked everyone I met what they thought would make a good opening question for a conversation.’
Voices begin to fill the room. Half of the participants immediately reach for the question jars, while the other half try to strike up a conversation on their own. After ten minutes, the chattering is interrupted.
DING!
When Teunissen rings her bell, it’s time to move on, and the participants scurry around the room, looking for their next conversation partner. After three rounds of intensive speed-dating, it’s time for a break. A cheerful man, who has been working in the Netherlands as a civil engineer since 2024, walks over to the bar. ‘I have just about everything’, he says. ‘A job, a permanent contract, a nice flat, and I speak the language fluently now. But what I’m really missing is someone I can ring up and ask if they fancy a game of tennis.’
Most of his colleagues are in their forties, fifties or sixties. Meeting people his own age has proved harder than he thought. ‘I don’t think the problem is my social skills. Sometimes I go to a pub and have plenty of chats with people. But then you walk out of the door and never hear from them again. I expect the same thing will happen tonight. I’ve had a nice evening, but soon I’ll walk out of here... and then what?’
The idea of asking for a phone number had not occurred to him yet. ‘But I’m definitely going to try that now!’
DING!
The bell rings again. With fresh drinks in hand, everyone sets off again in search of new conversation partners. The engineer also takes a seat opposite another participant. During their conversation, they both pick up their phones and type in each other’s names and numbers. Smiling, the engineer turns round and gives a thumbs-up. It worked.
Teunissen says she regularly receives messages from participants who have kept in touch after the event. One group of speed-dating men even went on holiday together. She has also made a friend of her own thanks to these events.
And this Friday saw another successful match. When the venue has to close at 10 pm, someone suggests continuing the evening at a pub. A group of seven young men and women head out together and immediately set up a WhatsApp group. ‘That’s really rewarding’, Teunissen says with a smile.