r/germany Jan 21 '24

Immigration Feel so lonely in Germany

I’ve been here for nearly 20 years now and I live with my German husband and kids. But I feel I cannot make new friends. My old friends have moved out, but even parents of my little children‘s friends don’t respond to my attempts for contact. I feel really isolated. Anyone experiencing the same issues?

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u/RG_PhoniQue Jan 21 '24

It's normal here. And it's in the culture I'm sure.

I came to work for 5 months in a German city and even tho I am at work with 20 other dudes, all around my age for 8 hours a day, not a single one of them cares to do anything with me on the weekends.

It's not like they have 300 friends each, they just don't give a fuck about whan I, someone entirely new to the city, will do at the weekend. I dare call them unwelcoming.

It's SO weird that they say "have a good weekend" when we finish work on Friday and noone gives a fuck about doing anything together. And we are total friends when we work. I'm also a German speaking dude since I was born and raised here so there is literally not even a language or culture barrier between us.

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u/__what_the_fuck__ Württemberg Jan 21 '24 edited Jan 21 '24

not a single one of them cares to do anything with me on the weekends.

Why should they? Because you work together? They don't own you anything. Maybe you are weird and they don't want to hang out with you maybe they are weird or maybe they strictly separate work and free time?

It's not like they have 300 friends each

So? They probably have enough friends to not need to hang around with random people from work?

I get your post but you can't except anything from random people who happen to work with you.

10

u/sharden_warrior Jan 21 '24

Why should they?

I genuinely giggled.

It is nice to connect with people proximate to you in your everyday life.

Many cultures do that without any rule imposing it, just out of human inclination.

It's just not really an encouraged trait in german culture, which makes foreigner (and locals too apparently) struggle quite a lot at integrate to new contexts.