A Beginner’s Guide to Socializing in Berlin
To really feel like you live in a place – to feel a real sense of belonging in a city – you need four things: A literal place to live (obviously), work of some sort, a lover or something like a love life, and then this fourth, often overlooked thing: a social life.
We take friends for granted a bit. When I moved here from Brooklyn, I sort of forgot that I’d have to start from scratch to have an active social calendar: to know where to go and what to do, and have people to do these things with. It can be quite hard to make solid plans! Berlin is a vibrant city, of course. With so many visitors and hostels and everything, it doesn’t take too long to learn that, say, clubs exist. But without some effort, you might think that nightlife is all about Matrix! Who knows when you’ll meet the cool person that turns you on to Sisyphos?
Fortunately, there are lots of resources out there to help those of us new to the city. After you’ve sorted your anmeldung and visa and all the headache stuff, and even found an apartment (miraculously!), it’s time to have fun. I don’t need to tell you about Tinder or im gegenteil or the many other dating apps focused on finding love and sex. But finding friends is another story. It’s sort of hard to imagine a Tinder for friendships, isn’t it?