Over the weekend I traveled to a little village in Germany to celebrate the 50th birthday of my friend Menusch. Her guests were local friends and family as well as others who traveled from Zurich and Berlin. I’ve been reflecting about how nice it is to be able to maintain friendships for decades even while living in faraway places. Menusch is now living and running a business in her hometown village but she’s also lived in Berlin, Zurich, and New York City, where I met her.

Maintaining a little “network” of relationships around the world requires effort but is much easier in the digital age. Inexpensive webcams and software such as iChat and Skype allow for cheap or free web video conferencing or simply talking with sound only or text chatting. We can share photos easily of important events in our lives, and this helps give the feeling of actually sharing in the event. Even buying gifts to celebrate that milestone from afar is easy nowadays. Just click away and have it shipped directly to the right corner of the earth.

You can’t hug through the computer though, and luckily that means a combination of travel and hosting visitors is necessary. Now that I live in the “destination city” of Amsterdam, I’m anticipating quite a few visitors this year. This month I will see my good friends Anja and Tetsu in both Berlin and Amsterdam, and then my sister and her husband will come to Amsterdam. Later in the summer we will connect with another friend in Ireland, and then several more visitors will come to Amsterdam.

Many of my vacations in the last 10 or 15 years have been centered around visiting friends and family in other cities, like LA, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Kampala, Uganda and Andros, Greece. By doing this, hopefully by the time I reach 50, and beyond to 60, 70, and so on, I will still have the same amazing group of lifelong friends I have now, and also some new ones. After a great bonding weekend in the countryside with Menusch and her “network”, I think I can count some new ones already. -Jill Woodward