Years abroad in Germany - not all they're cracked up to be

[Bosawoo]

My daughter (over 18) is taking a year abroad at a German uni as part of her degree studies. Frankly it seems like its not a lot of fun, the Germans not friendly at all even among students and she's pretty lonely and fed up. There doesnt seem to be any UK uni groupings over there and the Germans keep to themselves. Any one else worried about this kind of thing? Disappointed for her.

Yes, same experience in 1996/7. Althought I ended up moving to Germany 20 years ago and am still here! Your daughter will meet more people if she joins some kind of group- anything from sport to a political party will work. The Germans take a bit longer to warm up with new people but you can make friends!

Sounds like culture shock - This is part of what it means to live abroad, but if she can navigate around it she can turn it into a great experience. It sounds like she’s focused on the social experience and is having trouble making friends. Germans might not be very motivated to make friends with someone who is only around for a year and/or she is approaching social life like a Brit rather than a German. She’s more likely to overcome this if she can find a special interest group that will ease the way - a running or sports club, for example. Expat groups (think beyond just UK students) are also likely to have a number of people in a similar situation who would therefore a good avenue for socialising.

also encourage her to think beyond making friends - make a list of all the things she wants to do, and each week try to cross something off the list. Record it in a journal or a scrapbook or something (or I guess socials plays a similar function) so that she is focusing on what she is doing / experiencing and not on what she is missing.

i’ve moved abroad half a dozen times, and there are always lonely periods. Part of living abroad is taking the good and the bad together - it isn’t always the fun you imagined, but it can be rewarding nonetheless.

She could join some uni societies and sports activities. How about volunteering in her local area? It’s the same everywhere - move somewhere new and you have to make the effort to meet people.

i remember feeling like this (different country) with culture shock, challenging studies, loneliness etc. I learned a lot - including that living abroad was probably not for me! but it was hard lots of the times.

It helped me to plan calls and visits home and to my university friends, and visits from friends and family, also a little travel. Little routines to make the lonely times go by faster.

I went to the gym (subsidised), studied hard which ate up time and improved my scores and probably also my overall degree outcome.

I got a job involving a lot of (superficial but friendly) interaction with people.

accepted all social invitations (not many!)

It looked good on the CV.

I did a year abroad at the same age and I was very lonely, so I can relate. It’s made worse I think by all the hype beforehand, everyone telling you it will be the best year of your life etc.

I’ve since lived abroad a couple of times as an adult and it’s been completely different, I was better prepared and had better strategies for meeting people I think.

My advice would be for her to join as many structured activities as she can - anything which gets her out and about and meeting people. Obviously if she’s there to learn the language she’ll want to make the most of opportunities to meet German native speakers but it doesn’t hurt to make a few British/American/Irish etc friends as well - I avoided this for the first few months as but once I had a handful of friends who spoke my own language I felt a bit less lonely.

I remember feeling lonely when i moved in the UK to a new city after Uni. What helped was meeting people through a houseshare.

Where is your DD living? Totally agree with comments above, interest groups are her way to meet people regularly. Winter is normally a bit less sociable and she hopefully will find as the weather improves there's a bit more to get involved in. Has she got existing friends going out to visit her too as that's another way to enjoy her time exploring there.

My niece had the same experience when she came for a year to Newcastle from the US. The people weren't as open/friendly as she expected them to be (but I think it was just culture mismatch really).

My ds was at a Germany university last year on his year abroad and there was plenty of stuff to do with the Erasmus students from all over Europe as well as students from the US. He hated the bureaucracy of Germany, but made friends for life from all over the world. Is there nothing organised for the Erasmus students? His German uni just piled Erasmus/Turing together, organised socials and trips for them when they first arrived and by the time he left to go to his next year abroad placement after 6 months, the friendship group was organising itself trips all over Germany to explore. He was the only person from his UK uni there, but he did travel to see friends from his course in other cities, though it has to be acknowledged that the German rail system is bollocks awful. As he was doing all his uni courses in German he didn't worry too much about speaking English on social nights out. He has ASD and making friends is an issue for him, but he did find plenty to hang out with.

Can she see if there are some like minded Europeans, rather than trying to find other UK nationals? Usually they are very keen to speak English and all enjoy downtime from having to speak/think in German. His friendship group was Slovenian, Irish, American, Italian, French, Croatian and Spanish (which is giving him a lot of options for travel this coming summer!).

I found it much easier to make friends with other international students who were in the same boat. It was a great experience of getting to know lots of different nationalities.

@mimbleandlittlemy I think the German rail system is brilliant compared to the UK - in my experience trains were far cheaper and run to time!

@Sixthform25 - when were you last there? 4 hour delays not uncommon, trains just cancelled randomly with no notice. Even amongst the Germans, the railways are now a laughing stock. The Swiss won't allow German trains to run through now if they are late as they were screwing up the Swiss timetables. It was even one of the topics in Sunday's election. Worth reading this Guardian article:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/22/a-train-through-germany-is-europes-powerhouse-going-off-the-rails#:~:text=Creaking%2C%20overcrowded%2C%20neglected%2C,more%20general%20sense%20of%20malaise.

Rather than writing a year abroad off as 'not all it's cracked up to be', she needs to embrace what is within her control, seize the opportunity to explore Germany and adjacent countries, and find ways of making friends among other international students in student or other societies that reflect her own interests. I still have friends in my 50s made from joining the photographic society when I was an undergraduate, which had lots of visiting students, and which used to organise cheap weekends away in off-season holiday villages, as much for partying and sightseeing as photography. I did a year abroad in Paris, and honestly spent most of my time exploring on a shoestring. I did make friends, and had a brief affair, but the last legacy was an enduring love of French culture and art.

I studied at four different German Universities as part of my first degree, and had a ball at three of them. There is of course no such thing as "the Germans", she just hasn't met her tribe yet. Hopefully she will. 😊

@mimbleandlittlemy at Christmas and was again impressed at how cheaply & easily we got around (admittedly within a city rather than around the country). Thanks for linking that article it was interesting. Even in the picture showing the students who had been delayed by train you can see spare seats! I don't know how regularly you travel by train in the UK but the amount of times I spend ££s to travel into London and don't get a seat is ridiculous.

'The delayed train to Berlin is a Railjet from Graz, with a much welcome and well-stocked České Dráhy (Czech railways) restaurant car on board. “Plum crumble is finished,” says the waitress, but creamy mushroom, potato and dill soup is still available, as is a single portion of wild boar goulash with bacon dumplings and pickled vegetables.The train pulls into Berlin’s main station 20 minutes late'

Even that doesn't sound bad. Half the time the buffet car in the UK only has a congealed sandwich left or you can't actually get to it as there are too many people standing in the aisle!

This is genuinely de-railing the thread.

I'm glad your German travel was good but I think you were now increasingly lucky. I travel for work by train all the time here, on a line you can't even book a seat, let alone often get one, and yes, it's often rubbish, but my ds was truly shocked by the state of the German trains because they've always been held up as impeccable. He even said when he got back that he was glad to be home and on a half-decent train service. He was at uni 90 minutes from Munich and never made the journey in less than 4 hours each way, and then sitting in the luggage rack on two occasions - I have a marvellous picture sent by his friends of him stuffed in it. He's 6' 4". He then went inter-railing and the only trains, across Holland, Germany, Czechia, Austria, Lithuania and Hungary that were late, or cancelled were in Germany where they just shoved their train into a siding for 9 hours with no information and certainly no Plum Crumble.

👏pun @mimbleandlittlemy

Op has she tried the Erasmus Student Network?

esn-germany.de/for-students

She may be able to find other international students in her city on Facebook, eg try searching for Erasmus Berlin (or whichever city) 24/25

On my daughter's year abroad in Spain there was a WhatsApp group for Erasmus students in her city. There were potential meet ups just about every night - she wasn't even there as a Turing/Erasmus student 😂