Photo by Robb Long

Twin Cities Transplants members enjoy a laugh and a drink at Nye’s on East Hennepin. (From left) Loren Jensen, group founder Laurie Kersten, Janice Kriz and Roxanne Wodarczyk.

By Michelle Bruch

When Laurie Kersten moved to Minneapolis from Chicago and wanted to meet new friends 17 years ago, she put an ad in the local paper.

Much to her delight, about 30 other transplants responded, met and chatted for hours. A new social group was born.

“Twin Cities Transplants” has grown to include 700 paid members and has spun off into several other cities, said Kersten, a longtime Downtown worker. It’s designed for new arrivals ages 20 on up, and comes complete with Thanksgiving dinners, New Year’s Eve parties, book clubs and happy hours. The group has been fodder for lots of close friendships and 18 marriages, although romance is far from a goal — people prowling for nothing more than a date are quickly shooed away.

The Transplants can be spotted congregating throughout Downtown, and in recent months they met up at Grumpy’s, the Depot, Nye’s, Palomino and Hell’s Kitchen. The biggest Transplant event of the year is coming up on Feb. 9, and Kersten is expecting a rush of newbies at the Park Tavern that day.

“So many people grow up here and don’t move,” Kersten said. “They’ve got a strong social fabric, and it’s very hard to weave into that fabric.”

Rosie Dauth moved from the U.K. to Eagan for a job transfer about 5 years ago, and found the task of making friends a bit confounding — when colleagues said they should get together for a barbeque, for example, she repeatedly pressed them to set a date without success. (Eventually, a co-worker explained that the chatter was not a firm invitation.)

Dauth had previously relocated to cities in Germany and the U.K., but found it particularly difficult to be a newcomer here.

“I think it is harder in the Twin Cities,” Dauth said. “Minnesotans have lived here all their lives, they have a set amount of friends and they’re saturated.” After living here for five months and reading “How to Talk Minnesotan,” Dauth attended a Transplant brunch at the Mandarin Kitchen and met people she connected with very quickly.

For Carol Meier, the social scene was a precondition for moving here at all. She drove 16 hours from Rochester, N.Y. for a Transplants happy hour a year-and-a-half ago. She arrived at the Longfellow Grill and spotted three group members out on the patio but decided to sit at the bar and wait for more people to arrive.

Before she knew it, two hours had gone by, the patio was crowded with transplants, and she was suddenly hesitant to explain that she drove all the way from New York for a single happy hour. She was about to throw in the towel and leave when she finally struck up a conversation with someone from the group who came in to buy a drink.

“You’ve just got to be willing to show up,” Meier said. “I almost didn’t.”

Not everyone in the group is brand new to the Twin Cities — some join and never leave, and some join after living here for years without finding a groove.

Roxanne Wodarczyk lived here for five years before joining Twin Cities Transplants. She worked at a small company, and the group made a huge difference in her social life. “I’m still meeting new people,” she said.

Adrienne LaPointe organizes the 20-somethings group at Twin Cities Transplants, and said she also meets new people at every gathering. She said the events can be pretty casual — people might post their weekend plans on the message board and find friends to tag along.

The message board at the group’s website also helps narrow down groups of potential friends — runners, international transplants waiting for their work visas to arrive, people who want a girls’ night out but don’t want to go clubbing, or people who want to speak French over coffee.

Meier said she thinks her social life would not have taken off nearly as quickly without Twin Cities Transplants.

“I felt like I was at home,” Meier said. “For me, it’s been a life saver.”

For more information on Twin Cities Transplants, go to www.imnotfromhere.com.