Why is it so Hard to MAKE FRIENDS WITH GERMANS?

Hey rabbits!
Over the time many people from other countries have admitted to me that they find it difficult to become friends with Germans. It seems to be particularly hard. Some said it's because the Germans are somewhat "cold" and "distant". They don't talk much, they don't hug and kiss. So what is this all about?
I decided to think about this issue and the potential reasons - on both sides - for this impression. Why is it so hard to become friends with Germans? Here is what I came up with! Have fun! :-)

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[flammifera__]

Me as a German find it hard to make friends with other Germans, too. So ...

[Banned_loI]

Just ask them to do something. "Can you show me a good place to get food?" Or "Can you show me around the city?" If you get the "I have a boyfriend/girlfriend" line. Tell them that their boyfriend or girlfriend is welcome to come.

If that doesn't work, just stare at them.

[JustFreddi]

As a French guy, I often have the feeling that Germans think that I'm hitting on them when I just simply talk to them. I often get responses like "Oh, but I do have a boyfriend/girlfriend" or "I'm not interested", even though I just tried to make friendly smalltalk. I even heard people talking about me, saying that I'm a casanova because I would hitting on every person I meet, which kinda annoys me.

[LindsayKay]

As a New Zealander living in Germany for 9 years, I often get the feeling that Germans tend to look for the first negative thing they can find in a stranger. It's like a culture of "I don't know you, therefore there must be something wrong with you...ah there it is" and then fixate on that. I see Germans doing that to each other all the time, it's painful to watch. It makes people assume that the next person who rolls up is going to be an asshole, making everyone defensive, a viral phenomenon. Germans love New Zealanders, lucky me (thanks Whale Rider and Lord of the Rings), but there's an ugly flip-side to that coin, where certain other cultures (Russian, Turkish, Armenian etc) are not so lucky. This is a social dynamic that is not universal, but still very common. Coming from a culture where, if you don't have empathy for strangers you're a social outcast, this is very challenging to live with, as an Auslander. I go through phases where I avoid Germans because I can't be f*cked with cold defensive projection, then phases where I think "oh wait this is probably just me being a mal-adjusted inkorrect Auslander" LOL! No box of puppies, this place, thick skin essential.


PS. a concrete example: I was on a bus a couple of months back. Guy behind me had a coronary (heart attack). Bus was full, and nobody moved a muscle. Except for myself and (it turned out) an Afghan refugee. We got him out of his seat and went to work on him. Meanwhile (before we started in on the CPR), the driver comes up, angry, hands on hips and demands to know what's going on. Nobody got their mobile phones out, just watching coldly, and I had to tell that driver to shut up, get on the radio and call an ambulance. I'm just puzzled by that kind of coldness, even after nine years.

[gergelylazar]

I had a German colleague. We, Hungarians do not tend to like German people due to history. We kinda behaved like this for the first couple of days. Then I had my 21st birthday. She was the FIRST to greet me on that day. She became very open to me. It taught me not to judge her nationality.

[deep.space.]

Germans: "Social distancing? Piece of cake."

[sumimaind]

In all the countries I lived I found many friends from the country, but the most difficult places were Germany and Netherlands. In both countries I found it really hard to meet locals and stay not just friendly but actually become friends... They are very closed in their own bubble and it takes a very long time to break the ice with them.
Sometimes they say: "we are very hard to become friends but once you do, we become friends for life". But I disagree. When I lived in Brazil I made friends very easily and they are friends for life that I still keep in touch with and come to visit me often here in Europe, while most Germans I've met and "broke the ice", are friendly nowadays but still feels like there is this wall that they don't allow you to break. And you can't share your deepest thoughts or emotions with them because they don't even know how to deal with it. They are not comfortable with showing their emotions. I find it very cold. I don't feel this way with my international friends, we share everything with each other. The interaction between friends is much warmer and personal, the wall is simply not there with my friends from the US, or Latin America, or even other European countries.

[christinaweibach]

reading all the comments (as a german) here just makes me feel so sad...
I don´t get the feeling that we are coldhearted and mean and don´t socialize at all. Of course not all friends you have here are friends for ever and at my school as soon as they have one class together they also act like best friends, but for now 5 years I have my best 4 friends and I know that we all love each other even if we say it rarely... it just breaks my heart seeing how other nations think about us and only experienced rejection, judgement and fake relationships

[kennethflorek]

(I am from the USA.) Trixie covered a lot things. One thing Trixie didn't cover might be called "silent language." People assume this language is universal, as in the joke where if you woke up a Frenchman in the middle of the night, he would speak English like a normal person.

I once saw a documentary where they interviewed a black person who claimed he could tell that white people were racists because when he would get into an elevator, white people would move aside, as if there were something were wrong with him. Seriously? I always thought stepping aside was courtesy. One day I was in a tall building with excruciatingly slow elevators where 95% of the people were black. When the elevator doors opened, there was a solid line of black people at the front of the elevator and no one behind, but nobody moved even sightly so I could get by. It seemed for a tense moment that waiting another ten minutes for the next elevator might be advisable, in the face of this hostility, but the dissonant memory of that documentary popped into mind, and I decided to risk physically pushing my way through to the unoccupied back. No one took offense, but neither did anyone move further than they were nudged (as gently as I could.) The elevator rolled past the floors with a solid line of black people at the front and a lone white person at the back. When the doors opened at my floor, incredibly not a soul moved aside when I said "pardon me, " so again I pushed my way out.

There is more than one way to interpret this event, but the point is that two conflicting, silent languages were in use. If you are a foreigner to a country, say Germany, you may not get the cue when a German is being friendly, and you may even take a friendly cue as an unfriendly cue. Silent languages are not easier to learn than spoken languages; they are more difficult, because you assume you are speaking the same language when you are not.

[DSP]

What other called "Friends" germans call "Bekannte" except the ones you know since years and where you know you can real trust ;-)

[coolbrotherf]

I think it just takes longer to get to know Germans. They don't try to make friends with everyone they meet and that's probably not a bad idea.

[senortelevisoryt]

I made a german friend years ago. I never felt it was difficult to approach him. I've been in Germany visiting Berlin for a few days and my impression is that germans are very respectful. That fact may be misunderstood in a way that could make german people look distant when the truth is that they are too polite. Of course in Latin America where respect for other people is not so common people may think that making friends is easier. The problem is to find someone trustworthy. One little question: what do you think about british people? Do you think they are cool? Really?

[onnieduvall]

Ich bin amerikaner. I have known multiple Germans, Swiss Germans, and Austrians over the years. I have also know several people from other European countries, most notably France, the UK (England), Italy, and Slovenia. Out of all of them, Germans were almost hardest to get to lower their individual walls while the northern Italians would be quite open. Sicilians were very closed; the one European ethnicity that was impossible for me to break through. French, English and Slovenians were somewhere in between.

Of all the people I have known from around the world no one ethnicity compares to the Filipino when it comes to ease of friendship. Much easier than say, the Japanese (almost as hard to get to know as Germans). There are exceptions, of course as I have been able to get to know several Germans and Japanese really well right off the bat, but most have been quite reserved.

My rule, if I really want to get to know someone is to never give up until the tell me to back down. I had about as many successes as failures with that. I have modified it over the years but the goal is the same: Try to make friends with other nationalities.

[shb]

I had the same feeling. I am spanish and I've been here in Germany for almost one year. I had one friend who maybe liked being with me but sometimes act like she didn't want it or like I bothered her. The thing is that the last times we met each other I caught her in a wrong moment, which lead to misunderstanding her behaviour... I hope you are true and she just needs some time to figure it out, I had really good times with her and I want them to come back somehow :)

[Dreaded-Flower]

"bock aufn bier?" *BOOM* friendship

[JM-gjfi]

i completely agree. Germans are very serious and stay in distance to everyone anytime. it´s sometimes hard to live here. exspecially in berlin the people are rude and fast ALL the time... i hate that ignorance, this silence the whole time.. and at the same time it´s stressing ... it´s paradox .... i am a german and was born in berlin ...  but even as a young, good looking and open-heartet, friendly girl, what i am!, i have huge problems  to get to know anybody  and now i have problems with the lifestyle  here.. no one smiles or talks to anybody.. even if the street is FULL of People it´s silent and triste everywhere... and getting FRIENDS with anybody??! forget about it!!! that´s the sad truth ... hopefully you can understand my english phrases :)

[thomasschlitzer]

I was born in Cologne and kinda have that Cologne attitude to be open and extraverted. That‘s pretty cool when you are in Cologne because In a way we are all friends. Meeting people from other parts of Germany I noticed that they tend to be shocked at first but get warm quite fast.
But not living in Cologne anymore I also tend to have that artificial distance now and get annoyed when random people talk to me. That’s stupid but still it‘s there. Maybe because of little time or the weather? I dunno. Yep... My guess is the weather 😂

[eyl]

This is a type of video that I like very much. Keep going. On a more personal note, I met a German lady long time ago, and everything was instantaneous, I threw a ton of jokes at her, and she loved it. Nothing of all the stereotypes you just described. Have a nice day.

[iatsd]

It's a common problem for all adults. New Zealand, for example, just concluded a study of mental health for adult men and one of the things they noted was that the typical male in NZ makes an average of 1 close friend in their lifetime after leaving school (after excluding workplace colleagues and life partners). That's not a healthy number.

[tuahsakato]

Oh man, 5 years in Germany here, i tried so hard, still no actual "friends".
They simply don't care about you, and if they did, it's because you "impress" them or be better than them at something.
I'm really sorry, but that makes me think that it's so shallow. Makes me think it's not worth the effort.
If you think only smarties can be friend with smarties, then something is wrong with you.