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After I graduated from college, my friends and I really got into poker. Every Sunday night, we would meet at our friend Joe’s apartment and play for a total of a hundred bucks. It was our weekly ritual. with the HBO show Servant In the background, we would order food and, huddled around a small table, catch up before getting ready to head off to our boring post-college office jobs the next day.

Joe was the most enthusiastic of us all (to this day, he still plays professionally), and his passion for the game rubbed off on me (though not his skill). While I was never a top level player, I loved the challenge it offered, and trying to figure out the probability of the cards and how to read people’s statements. I read books on poker and did everything I could to get better. Poker was — and still is — an intellectual challenge for me.

On the US road trip that began my round-the-world adventure in 2006, I frequently stopped at casinos to play — and won enough to pay for much of my trip.

Finally, when I arrived in Amsterdam later that year, I was tired of the constant weed smoking that was so popular among my fellow travelers. As much as I loved getting high, I wasn’t commuting to sit in a coffee shop all day and bake. There was a whole city out there to see and explore.

So (slightly stoned) I often took long solitary walks around the city. (To this day, I walked more during that visit than all my subsequent visits.)

One day, I passed a casino. I didn’t even know there was a casino.

“I wonder if they play poker here,” I said to myself. Although I was on a tourist budget and hadn’t played in months, I thought it might be fun to have some fun abroad.

I sat at a table full of locals playing 2-5 no limit (ie first bets are 2 and 5 EUR). The stake was higher than I wanted, but it was all available, so I shopped for the minimum.

When I finally decided to join hands, the merchant said something to me in Dutch. “Excuse me, could you repeat that in English?” I asked.

I left myself as a foreigner – and this caused a lot of curiosity among the other players. I was young and clearly a backpacker, and they wanted to know how I ended up at a poker table and not a coffee shop, where other tourists seemed to go.

So I told them: I had lost my luster from smoking endless amounts of pot, and so I wandered every day, exploring districts and museums. And, as a poker lover, I also wanted to do something different.

Two players and I really hit it off. Greg was an older gentleman with a great sense of fashion who was always cracking jokes. The other, Lennart, was closer to my age and taller, and had a shaved head. He drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney.

Along with the other players at our table, they made me feel like I was part of something more. So I kept coming back. Poker was our bond, and for those short hours we were together each night, I felt like I was a local too, not just a backpacker high in hostel bars and wandering around taking pictures of museums. I was a tourist, getting below the surface of a place and getting to know the people who lived there.

After all, I was traveling the world to learn about it. As much as I enjoyed visiting museums, taking walking tours, and having short conversations with people I crossed paths with, none of them really gave me a deep understanding of any of the stops on my journey.

But these players were my mentors. They told me about city life and restaurants and bars that tourists didn’t know I should go to. I felt like I learned more about Amsterdam in those first nights than I had in the first week I’d been in town.

As a tourist, you often don’t interact in depth with the locals. You see them for a while and then you move on to the next destination. Getting to know a place — and the people in it — takes a lot of time not traveling.

As the days passed I kept delaying my departure to get back to the poker table. Greg and Lennart often offered to take me out, but I was naturally suspicious of two guys who wanted to hang out after the casino closed and ask probing questions. I was young. I was in a place I didn’t know. And when we left, the area was always dark and empty. I was worried that they would try to rob me.

So I declined his offer to hang out the first few times. As a natural introvert, this was my first experience with nontravelers, and I was a little wary.

But, finally, I agreed, because they wore me down and became regular people who just wanted to show some hospitality to the visitor.

They showed me Osterpark on the east side of the city. It was small, quiet and surrounded by willow trees, with small ponds with ducks around which the seniors were feeding. The locals loved the location, as they could avoid all the tourists and stoners who littered the Vondelpark.

They introduced me to Bitterbelen, bite-sized, deep-fried Dutch meatball snacks that look like falafel on the outside but taste like Sunday pot roast on the inside.

And, when I finally went to Spain for a week, I missed Amsterdam so much, I just went back. They were shocked when I returned to the poker table.

“I thought you were gone,” they said.

“I was but I missed Amsterdam too much so I came back,” I replied.

Weeks passed. I fell into a routine. I learned basic Dutch phrases from other players in casinos, slept late and used my winnings to finance fine dining, museum trips and an endless supply of cannabis. I walked for hours, reaching the edge of the city, trying to get lost in the canals and narrow streets that make Amsterdam so famous—the kind of thing you can do when, in the back of your head, you keep saying, “I could live here, ” and you suddenly find yourself comparing the neighborhood.

But all good things come to an end, including my European visa, and soon it was time to head to Southeast Asia. After about two months in Amsterdam, I couldn’t stay in Europe much longer.

On my last night in town, my longtime new-found friends and I went out to dinner, played poker, and then went for a final round of drinks. I told them where I was going and how long I planned to be on the road. We remind you – you really can’t when you don’t spend more than two days in one place or with one group of people.

They also recognized that fact. They appreciate that Amsterdam is more than the red light district and tulips and windmills and coffee shops. That’s what tourists and backpackers think when they come to Amsterdam, they said.

However, by his own admission, he was only speculating. They had never actually met the backpacker, let alone interacted with one. And why would they be? Backpackers have never strayed this far, and locals are busy living their daily lives, which doesn’t create many opportunities to meet tourists.

When we parted at the end of the night, they invited me to Utrecht for my next trip to the continent. Amsterdam is great, they said, but it’s not the real Netherlands. There is much more to the country than that.

He knows intellectually. It only takes one look at the map to know that Amsterdam is only a small part of the Netherlands. But as a traveler, you can often get tunnel vision about a destination, the walls of which are defined by the contents of your guidebook and the tips of fellow travelers who have come before you.

Only the locals know what the real story is – and until you know it, you’ll never learn it.

But, more than anything, Greg and Lennart taught me to trust strangers.

Because I was so cautious, I almost missed that opportunity. My newfound self on the road almost cost me two friendships.

Since then, I’ve remembered to give people the benefit of the doubt and trust them more.

Especially since, a few months later, while I was in Vietnam, Lennart called to tell me that Greg had been killed in a robbery. Greg had too many people after the casino closed to keep the night going and, when word got out, the others came to rob everyone, knowing they would have a lot of money. In the ensuing scuffle, Greg was shot and died at the scene.

I think of Greg often, especially his warm smile, funny jokes and friendly nature. He was never afraid to make friends. He may or may not have taught me.

And because of that I’ve learned to be more outgoing and trusting on the road. Whenever I’m in doubt, I just think to myself, “What would Greg do here?”

The answer is always: “He’ll say hello.”