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Great topic. From living in the Netherlands, Germany and France, I gathered this experience:

(1) using couchsurfing.com, facebook, expat.com, internations.com, meetup etc. to get into contact with people around common interests, events etc. / it's often the type of event where people really go to socialise with "strangers", which is different from e.g. bars, where people often come to see their friends

(2) joining any voluntary service that had my interest; I was singing in a few choirs that also had their members volunteer time to make ends meet - doing this kind of work together makes for real bonds and friendships to start to develop; in fact, your commitment is more "talking" than words like "I'd like to be friends"

(3) develop understanding for my own difficulties with the new culture, including sometimes people who didn't interact in a friendly way - in fact, loneliness can easily develop as the result of a lack of self-love, that looks like "nobody likes to be in my company"

So, as a coach, I've helped people to integrate the more difficult feelings around being alone, and to use them as the "mud" to grow their lotus (to put it a bit poetically today)

Hi Tonbil and welcome to the forum.

Nice introductory post.

I work with gestalttherapy and I support people to go open and make contact again. In the past when I feel alone then it feels like living in a cocon an seeing no possebillities to make a connecion with somebody. And that can have many reasons.

So when you feels isolated, alone and no love then you can make an appointment by Skype-video with Evert van der Weide (skype-name) and to find your way back to trust in your selves and to feels again that you have value,

Evert

HI,
I have been keeping a blog about my journey of moving from Australia to France and I wrote a blog about this exact thing. Why and how I felt isolated and what I did about it. I hope it helps others. Happy for you to join me on this journey.