Savvy ways to stay in touch with friends and family back home

Three subgroups of expats seem to exist in Luxembourg: those who come for two years, those who live here for five or seven, and the remainder who happily stay forever. Wherever you happen to fall into that mix, it is easier than ever to keep in touch. But to do so in a meaningful way is something entirely different.

Talking, even briefly, is better than texting

Anecdotally it feels true, and research also shows that reaching out through voice notes and calls (rather than just texting) is more beneficial to our health and relationships.

Yes, sometimes it's a bit much to constantly arrange video or phone chats, but smaller catch-ups are also beneficial. A 2021 study showed that chatting just 10 minutes a day can help offset loneliness and depression — and I've found that reaching out to ask if someone wants a random chat for ten minutes provides a more spontaneous piece of 'real time' (even if they're thousands of kilometres away).

Workarounds for the tech-phobic

Whatsapp and Wechat are the obvious choices here, but you may need to employ a few tricks and new habits depending on where your relatives and friends are 'at' in terms of ease with technology.

For my relatives who lack access to Facetime (Android users!), do not mess with Meta, and cannot be bothered to download Zoom, Skype provides a service (for a €3-4 monthly fee) that allows direct calls to another person's phone as if you (the caller) are in the same country.

Keep in mind: this will 'consume' data for you, so it's wise to be near a wi-fi source, but it's just a regular phone call for the other person. At first glance this may seem unnecessary or outdated, but there are luddites and grandparents among us who only use phones as Alexander Graham Bell intended and they're worth connecting with, too.

Various hacks and systems... and meeting people where they are

Ascertaining a certain part of the week that's a good 'window' between you another person is always helpful, especially if dealing between parents of school-age kids. I know that Thursday afternoons are the 'pocket of time' when my Midwest friend has both of her kids in childcare and my son is ... carefully watching Ninjago in the next room.

We've also adopted the 'Ping!' system, which works even better for people with very young kids. Essentially, it's an alert or code word to chat from afar, with zero urgency. If one of us is free to talk outside of the usual times — we send a single text that says 'Ping!' If the other person is also available, then: woot, there's a chat date! If not, meh, there's always the next ping.

As for meeting people where they are? If you notice that someone seems to prefer Facetime (or Facetime audio, why not) to Instagram video or Zoom, well then, that's their preferred form of reaching out to you, faraway expat. There's also a nice degree of spontaneity to keeping in touch on a few different platforms.

Adding the cities of your loved ones to your phone's World Clock (if you use Apple products) is also not a bad idea. Nobody wants to accidentally call their brother-with-a-newborn at 2am; although he might actually be awake then.

Creative and eccentric stuff

Penpals can still happen. Feeling a bit short on time, we've employed 'postcard penpals' — just a short note and a stamp and off it goes! — for our child and our faraway friends' kids. Extra points for including a follow-up photo holding the postcard when it arrives.

Planning annual or semi-annual trips with people you care about is also a winner, especially when they also prefer to go somewhere sunny between October and March.

Random nonsense mail cannot be underestimated. Shortly after a new president came into office in a certain country, he produced his first Tweet (as they were known then). It was a single, enigma word ('Covfefe') and I felt compelled to scrawl it on expensive paper and send this to a friend in Denmark. She appreciated it. She said she did, at least.

Calendars of the very real or very app variety

You may find yourself living a parallel existence of people in your physical space and the equally valuable people who now live far-away in your 'technology space'. Calendars become an important tool to keep everything tethered.

For example: as friends at home have more children, I've organised the birthdays of their little ones to appear on the calendar every year. An added pro-tip: include the year of their birth on your annual reminder because, as we know, it's nice to keep track — and it's not very fun to ask, again, how old they are now.

If you're the gifting type, it's also useful to have a two-week notification before birthdays, providing ample time to gather things magpie-style for overseas packages or to arrange for a delivery through the usual suspects.

Gifting from afar...

Which brings us to gifting and material gestures! My current favourite 'go-to for gifting from abroad' is finding something hyper-local and ordering directly or arranging a pick-up that works best for the recipient. Local bookstores and boutiques might even know your friends and family, and have recommendations for them, too.

If objects are not your loved one's 'thing', you can also utilise the wonders of the internet to order a nice meal for delivery or pick-up in their area. This requires a bit more work but it's particularly helpful if they're going through a hard time and you can't be with them in-person.

Along the same lines, we've had restaurant vouchers for venues in Luxembourg suddenly appear in our inbox — arranged from nine time zones away — during some tough times. It felt nice to have something to look forward to, and know that someone was hoping the best for us. 

Going 'local' through Amazon: one of the most helpful things to know is that, indeed, Amazon — a company with some of the most intense and reliable logistics in the world — has a spate of global entities that will allow you to ship 'locally' most anywhere. If you find that Amazon doesn't have a country-specific website for, say, Denmark, try looking for nearby country sites to see where they ship (with this particular Nordic example, you can use Amazon.de).

Small and light is the way to go if you want to ship directly from Luxembourg. I like sending chocolates, books, and coffee beans because they're virtually indestructible and weigh next to nothing. Depending on what you send, there is an 'object value' which automatically results in additional duties and taxes for your recipient. It's possible to be 'just under' this limit, to skirt these fees — and it doesn't hurt making an entrance at Post to ask about current regulations.

Sharing updates & keeping others in the loop

What kicked off my interest in writing this article was 'Stewiegram' (name changed, obviously). It's my favourite keep-in-touch concept, introduced to us by Australian friends grappling with raising their son far from family. Every day they add a new photo of Stewie for 'Stewiegram': a Whatsapp account (though the concept could also apply to Instagram) shared between family members abroad. That's it. It's breezy, it's fun, and it's also assembling memories without much effort.

There are other apps like 'My Family Album' and 'Once Upon'. These formats allow parents to pick among favourite photos to share as a continuous, online album with grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. You can also curate 'in real life' photo albums and frequent deals for free prints arise every month. Our first expat friends built these IRL albums with photos of parents and siblings back home, so their toddler daughter would be more familiar with them when the time came to visit home.

The classic winter holiday card

If you want more of an annual update: holiday cards are a (nearly) effortless means of sharing your family's exploits, and there are myriad ways to cobble them together: online print services, a classic seasonal card with photos or a note, or even just a copier at (your spouse's more-abandoned-on-the-weekend place of) work.

A former colleague sends a holiday card 'duo' I look forward to each December. We don't see one another often, so it's wild to see how big her kids have grown and how she's also ageing backwards. Every year she pairs a collage photo of the family's experiences and vacations with a simple print-out of 'updates'.

Her creative method for these updates is worth mentioning: she uses a grid, with five family members (pet included) on the horizontal column and roughly eight topics across the vertical — detailing everyone's favourite moments, current book and media interests, and new milestones. It's a neat illustration of a year in a life, while also providing some pretty cool recommendations across a few different age groups.

Managing your own expectations

If your friends and family haven’t lived abroad recently, you might have to deal with some indignities. There may be some very well-intended people who send gifts — huzzah gifts! — without twigging that there might be gnarly duties and taxes to pay upon receipt of these items in Europe.

There might also be the family member who forgets your birthday or who simply doesn’t know how to do the 'sending gifts or cards or calls from afar' thing. There's a chance they might not be totally at ease with your new expat set-up; this will be obvious if they keep asking when you're coming back home.

They still love you (very likely) but just remember you're REALLY far — or far enough that it's harder for them to envision how to do the whole 'communication thing' with the added distance. Some people are also just more the 'in-person' type. You might have to hold their hand through showing them how to, well, keep in touch.

And other people might not be as interested in retaining the 'invisible string' of your friendship if they know you're not necessarily coming back anytime soon. There are people who just want to be in touch on the holidays and that's alright too; it's all about meeting people where they are ... and also maybe making time, for yourself, and settling into the new place you call home.