Making Friends in Germany

I've started making friends in Germany as I've mentioned in previous posts (Resources for Expats Living in Stuttgart, Making Friends in Germany) and I've met some very nice people.  But I'm at the point now where I want to start deepening my relationship with some of those people that I've met and start getting to know people one on one, instead of only in a large group.

Although I am friendly, I am actually shy when it comes to extending the first invitation. In many ways making friends in Germany reminds me of job hunting.  However, rarely does a dream job just fall in your lap, usually you have to look for openings, which is time consuming, then once you find a potential job, apply to it, then see if the company also sees you as a potential fit, then meet to see if you actually are a fit for each other - similar to what happens when you are making friends.  So while making friends in Germany is a two way street, I've decided to be more proactive, since good friends, like good jobs rarely just fall in your lap.  It takes a lot of work to make good friends, just as it does to land a good job.

My Making Friends in Germany strategy is to ask one new person each week to do something.  This will be especially important for making German friends, since Germans can be a bit more reserved when they first meet you, but I would like both German and expat friends.  So far, despite my initial shyness, I've had great success!  I invited an American expat I'd met at several different expat functions to a movie we had previously discussed.  I've invited a Thai lady from my German course to lunch (one on one) and this week alone I invited a Guatemalan lady from my German course and her husband to dinner with J.P. and myself and we had a great time.  Although it was a week night, we stayed for 3 hours conversing in a mix of German, English and Spanish, with me frequently using all three in a single sentence.  I also invited one of J.P.'s German friends to join us for an adventure course.  He wasn't able to make it, but sounded like he would have been interested had he been free.

I have a few more people on my list that I plan on asking to do things as well in the upcoming weeks as part of my Making Friends in Germany strategy.  Fortunately, I haven't had to do all the asking and have received some lovely invitations as well which are much appreciated.  Making friends in Germany does take time and patience and it makes me thankful for the good friends I already have in Canada.  It also takes me out of my comfort zone, but I am still enjoying making friends in Germany and believe I am on my way to making some life long friends who will no doubt further enrich my life.

If you have any tips on making friends, please share them below. 
Also check out Language of Friendship by Grounded Traveler, another expat living in Germany
For more tips see Seven Tips for Making New Friends by The Happiness Project author, Gretchen Rubin

Making Friends in Germany

Making friends in Germany, well anytime you move anywhere is never easy, especially when there are language barriers.  Today, I found myself having lunch with five other students from my Intensive German Language Course, quite by chance.  Someone mentioned they were hungry and off we went.  We were a rather electic group representing Japan, Mongolia, Mexico, Thailand and myself from Canada.  We range in age from 17 to 50-something and from professions as diverse as a recent high school graduate, to a piano teacher to a former program director.

But despite our differences, the conversation soon turned to familiar territory, that which I could have been discussing with my closest friends in Canada - that being the topic of men naturally, but with a cultural spin of course.  Thai and Mexican men were quickly dismissed as womanizers not to be trusted, while we didn't get much information about Mongolian men since the 17 year old Mongolian representative had not yet had a boyfriend.  I naturally supported German men while the Thai representative countered that German men were notoriously difficult.  After some debate we came to the conclusion that German men were good for strong women , but not for soft spoken women who were too afraid to speak their mind.  I am of course aware that my new friends and I were grossly overgeneralizing but overgeneralizing or not, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and the familar territory that I found myself on.

When I finally left after gabbing and laughing for two hours, I left in awe of how easy and free our conversation was despite spanning five different countries, languages and cultures.   I had a ton of things to do this afternoon but making friends in Germany was more important than anything else I had to do.  We've decided to make it a weekly ritual and will be meeting for lunch after class next Thursday.  Perhaps making friends in Germany will be easier than I thought.