What are the people like here in Germany?

After living in this apartment for almost four weeks I just had the first conversation ever with one of my roommates. It prompted me to write an entry about what the people are like over here - and that one statement pretty much sums it up. The end.

No but seriously - I live in an apartment of five people, and I never see any of them. Not even Phillip, the guy I hung out with a few times in the beginning. It is so hard to get used to, especially after living with my best friends in Athens to living with total strangers here. Doors are always shut, no one makes noise, and I think they all even eat in their rooms, because I never even see anyone in the kitchen - which should be the communal spend-time-here-place. Tonight I went to wash some of my dishes in the sink and stumbled upon Paul cooking some pasta. I struck up a conversation and started to actually get to know who this guy is who lives on the other side of the wall - and when his pasta was done, he picked up the pan off the stove and brought it all in his room. Just like that. Didn't even take the pasta out of the pan first.

That is what most of my experiences with Germans have been like - they're not mean, but it really doesn't occur to them to talk to people they don't know. They don't see the point in getting to know new people or exchanging courtesies or even initiating conversation for the first time. You can sit next to someone at a table in the dining hall and never even make eye contact - and that's totally normal.

That's why they are always so put off when I ask for help - because they are taken aback that someone actually had the nerve to talk to them and interrupt their life to ask a foolish question. Same goes for being in public places - don't dare bump into anyone, and if you do don't try to apologize, because then you have interrupted them twice - the first time when you got in their way, the second time when you talked to them.

In my classes the people haven't necessarily been unfriendly to me - just generally disinterested in pursuing any sort of dialogue. Every now and then I'll meet someone who talks back, but then after class when I turn to ask his/her name, they're already halfway out the door. It's such a different philosophy than what I'm used to from being an American college student - everyone at UGA is generally very friendly, and constantly exchanging cell phone numbers and emails, and asking if you want to join them for lunch, meet them downtown on weekends, etc.

Slowly but surely I'm starting to make some international friends and realizing that we're all experiencing the same unintentional cold shoulder from the Germans - and it's almost become a joke that we live here in Germany, but don't actually know any Germans. I had to learn how to laugh about it and how not to think that it was a fault of mine for not having success and not knowing how to make friends. Chris likes to laugh at me because I get so excited every time I actually do have a conversation with someone - but it's the small victories that (hopefully) eventually lead to actual friendships.

I'll figure it out eventually, but I just really hope I don't return to America cold and distanced like the people I live with. I just have to keep in mind that fifteen years ago this place was a communist country, and that history helps explain a lot about why things are the way they are. These people have known life in such a harder and coarser way than I have, and they chose their manner of coping and living - I'll learn what they have to offer, then figure out what works for me.