Meeting Germans

My most recent goal is to start hanging out with more German people. Currently I mostly hang out with English speaking people. But since the majority of these people are only here for one-year stints, by the end of the summer I will have lost most of my friend group.

Plus the fact that a big reason that I came here was to improve my german, yet I spend far too much of my time speaking english.

One of the reasons is that I am both shy and lazy. Speaking to a group of people I don't know very well is already daunting, but speaking to them in a foreign language that I am far from confident in is like a fiery hell to me. Although I can understand most conversations, when native german speakers are speaking amongst themselves they tend to speak faster and about more complicated subject matters. By the time I have fully digested the conversation they have already moved on, and any way since my german knowledge consist mainly of conversations to be had with 8-year-olds, my chances of contributing something meaningful/witty/funny are slim-to-nil (although to be fair in English I don't usually fare much better...). Bars and restaurants also make it really hard to hear and understand anyone.

It's easiest for me to talk to someone one-on-one but at best I get a half-german half-english conversation because almost all germans have really good english (those jerks!) so when topics get more complicated it just gets easier to talk in English. *sigh*

Also, another problem is that I've noticed that Germans (and actually I think this is true of other Europeans too) are just hard to become friends with. For newcomers and outsiders like myself it's incredibly frustrating, but then again I tend to find Germanfriendships a lot deeper and meaningful than the American style.

Whenever I meet foreign people from abroad I am always fascinated and am eager to become their friends. I think that's more norm in the U.S., especially if you are from somewhere exciting like Europe.

And it's not that Germans won't be friendly or interested in you if you are foreign, it's just really hard to break into the friend category I think.

To be honest I think it has something to do with the nature of friendships. Yes, it is hard to really befriend a German but once you do the level of friendship is longer and stronger than anything I typically experience at home. Plenty of people around our age are friends for a half or whole decade at least and the bond is something much deeper. Which seems much more comforting than the fickle, flighty, superficial friendships I find myself most often a part of at home.

I'm hoping that by fall though my lack of options will finally allow me to come a little bit out of my shell and finally talk to some cool German, but we'll see...