All things considered, I generally have a pretty easy time making friends. But even still, it's been tricky to establish friendships with Germans since I moved to Berlin. I have determined a two main reasons for this difficulty.
Reason number one: On the home front, our apartment is chock full of friends who were imported, as it were, with my teammates. Ready-made buddies who speak my native language, laugh at my native jokes, eat my native food. Now, don't get me wrong, I love love love my teammates and would be a much unhappier Berliner without them. But having a stock of friends who I can hang out with without having to so much get out of my PJs (which I do surprisingly often, in fact) makes it much harder to motivate myself to look outside home for friends to chill with.
Reason number two: Berlin is, as you may have already realized, a big city. And when I say big, I mean BIG. I ride the train/bus/tram for 30 to 45 minutes to get somewhere without batting an eye. And the people who I would consider potential friend material do not live in any one specific area. The varied neighborhoods of Berlin are definitely a strength of the city and give it heaps of character, but they also cause people to spread out. A lot.
However, the point of this post is not to lament the difficulty of making friends in an immense city. The point is to say I'm finally making some! Und zwar, through my church. Connecting with people at Berlinprojekt (which I LOVE on many levels, one of which is coffee) presents its own set of challenges. Mostly, because it consists of 300 twentysomethings packing into a movie theater every Sunday morning at 11 a.m., when at least half of us are still wiped out from the never-go-anywhere-before-midnight Berlin nightlife. Not the ideal situation for jumping into a deep friendship-launching conversation with the stranger sitting next to you. I have made some friends through my small group, which is great, but 7 out of 300 is still a pretty meager ratio.
Hence, when they started talking a few months ago about starting a second service in my neighborhood, I jumped on board. Helping out with the Kreuzberg/Neukölln Gottesdienst presents me with a chance to contribute to the church in a significant way--we're just about to bust at the seams in the current location, so a second service is definitely needed--and get to know people at the same time. JOY!
We had a first preliminary Infotreffen on Saturday in our possible new location, which happily is only a five minute walk from my apartment. The meeting itself went just swimmingly, and provided a great opportunity to connect with some fun, Jesus-loving people who live in my neighborhood. I have a good feeling about this. =)