Studying Abroad

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Next year, I'll be studying abroad in Germany or Austria. For some reason, I feel like this is a good chance for me, in terms of love and dating. I don't know why - perhaps I'm being overly-optimistic. To me, it seems like the my being a foreigner might make a bit of awkwardness all right. My German is excellent, by the way - even though I still stutter a bit while speaking.

Is this just being too optimistic? I'm sure that, regardless, I'll have a good time. I've been really looking forward to the opportunity to study in a different environment, improve my German even more, and travel.

I really hope your theory works for you. Good luck.

Some people are more understanding of foreigners, others are a bit harsher on them.

If you manage to determine the right people soon enough you should be in for lots of great times discovering new things about the country you are visiting and who knows what else may come along.

That said foreigners are still expected to take some sort of active role so dont expect everything to be handed out to you just because you are a foreigner, ask people about their plans, see if you can join them... thats the only thing Ive seen work and I ve limited myself to interacting with foreigners for over a year for personal reasons

Almost all my sexual experiences happened in Germany, or near there, with a German woman. I also lost my virginity (sort of) to a German woman the first time I went there on a short high school exchange. I think they think people with accents are exotic and they are particularly attracted to Americans who can speak German, because that's unusual. My German was not and is not excellent, so if yours really is, that will probably be even more of a bonus for you. German women are also supposed to be more direct. And yes I did have the experience that when I acted strange, people attributed it to my being foreign, whereas I have no excuse in the USA.

However it is also true that Germans are more difficult to make friends with. The people are generally colder and don't seem interested in making friends with people that they know will leave in a few months. All of the other exchange students in Germany with me had the same problem, even the really extroverted ones.

Also, I wouldn't go in there assuming that everything will work out fantastic. You never know how other people will react to you and I think having high expectations just sets you up for disappointment. I actually went there to get away from everybody. I was really tired of all the social expectations I had which I never seemed to be able to fulfill, and I wanted to go some place where no one expected anything of me. It was mostly an accident that I met a German woman who liked me there.

You should definitely go study abroad, you never know who you´d meet.
I flirted a lot more in France than here at home. I even got admirers.

It will depend on where you're going. For example, people in Hamburg are a lot more reserved than people in Munich, on the other hand people in Munich are in general more conservative than people in Hamburg. People in Berlin are supposed to be very frank and outspoken, people in Vienna tend toward the weird and macabre, and so on. I live in the German-speaking part of Switzerland myself.

Also depends. People in Bern are said to be slow and down to earth, Zurich is hectic and businessminded, Geneva is international and more French than Swiss, but as the birthplace of Calvinism without the French libertinism, people in the Jura mountains are supposed to be strongwilled with anarchistic tendencies, and so forth.

Young people in Germany are eager to speak English and love American pop culture. So it shouldn't be that hard for you to make friends over there.

And if you are a more logical, always abide by the rule type, you'll like it there. (Don't cross the red lights, because they don't.)


I myself was an exchange student in high school. I spent a year in a small town in California. It wasn't a very good experience.