There’s something distinctly Berlin about the setting I am writing in. Inside the jazz café, elegantly dressed business people sit next to a table of young men getting ready to head outside for a cigarette. Miles Davis hums in the background, while loud emergency sirens thunder past every now and then (a true Berlin staple). I check the time once more and confirm that I’ve been here for three hours and written as many lines. There’s a comforting quality to the casual cacophony that appears to be an omnipresent aspect of life in a busy metropolis. It’s impossible to miss: you feel it on nights out in the city when you see throngs of people whatever the hour, and you feel it in the everyday, the mundane, as you get to the supermarket on a Tuesday afternoon and it’s as busy as Magdalen Street Tesco at 6pm.
The similarities with our small university city do end there, though. With all its colleges, clubs and societies, sports teams, and more, Oxford is an excellent place to meet new people and make new friends. The lack of these spaces, even for students, has been perhaps the greatest culture shock that has arisen after moving to Europe. Student-club-culture just isn’t as big here. As a result, social occasions are fewer and farther between, indeed the concept of a ‘social’, just for the sake of it, here feels distant and foreign. And as much I’d like to pretend my German is fluent, a language barrier does still exist too (the time I blanked on the word for ‘weight’ in the gym comes to mind). This, combined with the relatively fleeting character of social events, has meant it is more difficult to form meaningful relationships with people than what many of us are used to after two years at Oxford.
As my café grows gradually busier, I can’t help but notice that a significant proportion of the people slowly trickling in are by themselves. Certainly, there is something to be said for the culture of voluntary solitude that is to be found in so many European hubs today. In the era of remote-working, recorded lectures, and Instagram reels, it comes as no surprise that so many people seem to go it alone. One friend, who grew up and completed his undergraduate in Berlin, told me that most of his friends here today are those he went to school with. Platforms like BumbleForFriends and Meetup also lack the popularity they enjoy in places like London.
I hope I have not soured your impression of Berlin too much thus far. Of course, I would be completely remiss to portray the city as some sort of unwelcoming wilderness, populated by lonely creatures bent on ceaseless, solitary social confinement. In fact, after a little over a month living here, I’ve come to appreciate the desire to enjoy one’s own company. There’s a distinctly freeing quality about being beholden only to one’s own interests and ideas. To be able to make plans that suit only you, and that can be broken on a whim with no hurt feelings. And there is a unique sense of excitement and discovery that accompanies trying out things you have done a thousand times with others, alone. My first museum trip in Berlin saw me taking the time to really engage and enjoy the 80 years of recent German art history on display before me, strolling through the exhibition slower than a tourist on Broad Street – I spent three hours at the Neue Nationalgalerie that afternoon.
Feelings of isolation are almost inevitable at the start of a year abroad. Rather than viewing this as a setback though, the best approach can be to embrace the unfamiliar social landscape as an opportunity for growth. Stepping outside your comfort zone can be a positive, enriching experience. Simple things, like reading at a café, can be opportunities to explore the diversity of one’s local area and to discover something new about yourself. In some ways, doing it alone can be the most rewarding, most organic way to meet new and interesting people. Last week I connected with a pair of literature students in a coffee shop I’d decided to try over my copy of Fitzgerald’s ‘Tender Is The Night’.
As the honeyed tenor of Davis’ trumpet begins to grow louder, and the lights dim to a soft, mellow gold, I can’t help but think that going it alone isn’t so bad.
