Starting a Semester in a New City: How to Really Settle In and Make Real Friends in Your First Weeks

The semester is just getting going, you're fresh in a new city, and - honestly - you don't know a single person here. Your flatmates give you a friendly nod, in the lecture hall you're sitting between a bunch of unfamiliar faces, and in the evening your room goes quiet. That feels rough at first. The good news: almost everyone around you feels the same way, they just don't show it. And the first few weeks are the best moment you'll ever get to change that.

Why right now? Because at the start of the semester, for once, everyone is open. Nobody has fixed cliques yet, everyone is looking to connect, and talking to strangers is completely normal right now. This window closes faster than you'd think - after four to six weeks, most groups have sorted themselves out. So here's an honest, practical roadmap for how to use these weeks.

Week one: just say yes a lot

The most important rule for the first seven days is unspectacular: Say yes to anything that's even remotely social. The freshers' pub crawl, the flat's kitchen night, the aimless barbecue in the park, the trip nobody's really keen on - go. Not because every event will be amazing, but because every one is a chance to see the same people a second time. And recognition is the raw material friendships are made of.

A few things that concretely help:

• Come early, not fashionably late. If you're the first or second one there, it's easier to strike up a conversation with individual people than to burst into a full, loud group later on.
• Remember names and one detail. "You're the one from Regensburg, right?" at the second meeting works wonders. Nobody expects you to remember everything - that you remembered anything at all, though, that lands.
• Be the person who asks. "Fancy grabbing a drink afterwards?" or "I'm going to the campus tour tomorrow, want to come?" Someone has to make the first move. If it's you, you become the person plans form around.

And this is important: that jittery feeling when you approach strangers doesn't go away - you just get used to it. Everyone else is just as nervous. If you want more on the first week, we wrote a dedicated Freshers' Week Survival Guide.

Contacts through uni: the easiest starting point

Uni is your home-field advantage because it hands you repetition for free - you see the same people week after week in the same room. That's exactly what you need. Use it actively:

• Don't sit somewhere different every time. In lectures, sit near the same faces where you can. A "hi" automatically turns into more after three weeks.
• Study groups are social groups in disguise. Suggest a study group early, before exam panic hits. You'll then meet regularly, have a pretext, and are guaranteed to end up talking about things other than the material.
• Student council and freshman mentors. The student council organizes most of the freshman activities and is made up of people who deliberately want to help you. Show up there - it's the lowest-barrier contact there is.
• The path in between counts. Ask someone if you can head to the cafeteria together. Those ten minutes on foot are often worth more than the lecture before them.

The mistake many first-years make: they wait for a conversation to appear out of nowhere. But it almost never appears out of nowhere - it comes from repeated proximity plus a little initiative. The proximity is what uni gives you for free. The initiative is what you have to bring.

Outside uni: where acquaintances turn into friends

Uni contacts are great for getting started, but they often stay stuck at "nice coursemates" when the shared experience is missing. Real friendships almost always grow out of something you do together and repeat regularly. So here's the most important piece of advice in the whole article: find at least one recurring thing outside of your studies.

It can be almost anything: university sports (bouldering, volleyball, martial arts - doesn't matter), a choir, volunteer work, a language tandem, the open jam session at the pub around the corner, a running group. What matters isn't the what, it's that it's firmly in your calendar and the same people show up. A weekly commitment beats ten random parties, because commitment and repetition are exactly the two ingredients that turn strangers into friends.

And then there are the local events and meetups: they're the fastest way to break out of your uni bubble in a new city and meet people who don't study the same thing. Look at what's going on in your city - like events in Munich, events in Berlin, or what's happening in Cologne. Go, even (especially) on your own. Going to an event alone forces you to talk - as a pair, you usually keep to yourselves.

Ways to meet people: effort vs. payoff

Not every route is equally worth it. This assessment is rough and estimated from experience, not science - but it helps you prioritize where to pour your limited early-days energy:

Route	Effort	Payoff	For whom
Freshers' week & student council	low	high	Everyone, right away
Starting a study group	low	high	Anyone who wants to see people regularly
University sports / club	medium	very high	Anyone looking for a fixed crew
Local events / meetups	medium	high	Anyone who wants out of the uni bubble
Actively using flatshare life	low	medium-high	Anyone living in a flatshare
Part-time job with a team	high	medium	Anyone who needs the money anyway
Apps just for scrolling	low	low	Nobody, on its own

The rough distribution of where friendships actually form for most students in the first weeks - again: an estimate, not a statistic:

Staying on it: the part almost everyone forgets

This is where most people fall down - not at the meeting part, but at the following up. You meet nice people, swap numbers, and then nothing happens. A good conversation only becomes a friendship if there's a second, third, and fourth one. Concretely:

• Message within 48 hours. "Hey, yesterday was fun - want to come to the cafeteria/bouldering on Thursday?" The longer you wait, the weirder it feels. Right after, it's not weird at all.
• Suggest concrete plans, not vague ones. "We should do something sometime" fizzles out. "Cinema Saturday, 8 pm, in?" doesn't.
• Be the repeat offender. Invite the same two or three people multiple times. Friendship is repetition, not a one-off fireworks show.
• Expect turndowns and don't take them personally. At the start of the semester everyone's calendar is chaos. A no almost never means "I don't like you," it means "it doesn't fit right now." Ask again next time.

And be kind to yourself: it's completely normal for the first weeks to feel lonely even though you're surrounded by people. New deep friendships take time - usually months, not days. What you're building now, in these first weeks, is the foundation. The rest comes if you stay on it.

The short version

Say yes to everything in the first week. Use uni for automatic repetition, but don't rely on it alone. Find one fixed thing outside your studies where the same people show up regularly. And above all: follow up, again and again, even after turndowns. If you want to know how this works beyond studying, in any new city, we wrote a detailed guide to making friends in a new city.

For exactly the "meet the same people regularly and do things together" part, by the way, we're building S'Up - an app that brings people together at events in real life, instead of leaving them stuck online. If that interests you, you can put yourself on the waitlist here. But honestly: most of what's in this article works starting today, no app needed.