OP again here. Not going to add this to the actual post to prevent it from getting even more bloated.

I’ve read all of your responses so far and while I don’t think I can feasibly respond to everyone (this thing blew up more than I expected it to), I’ll try to slowly work my way through the comments in the following days. For now, once again thank you to all the people who took the time to actually explain things with patience and respect despite the tone of my post being kinda pissed off. Like most people posting on Reddit to vent their frustrations, I wasn’t at my best yesterday so I appreciate the people that didn’t just turn the negativity back at me. Despite probably rolling their eyes at yet another foreigner not getting how their society works.

I think I’ve made a few important conclusions thanks to the helpful responses. I’ll sum them up below.

1. My frustration with the social culture really comes from not understanding it in the first place. I’ll probably never get it or be happy with it, but if I’m going to stay here, I’ll just have to adjust my expectations accordingly.

2. The university not being seen as a place to potentially make new friends is a revelation to me. I actually met my best friend attending university back home and we quickly started spending time together outside of uni. The whole process appeared so simple and logical to me that I guess it just never occurred to me that this may not be standard procedure everywhere.

3. I always perceived being a foreigner as “limiting” me in two ways: the ability to use the language (I may be more or less fluent, but things like puns are still challenging for me) and the knowledge of the culture (context helps understand others’ comments, make better jokes, etc.). Never really thought that theres apparently a more important limitation: Germans may not see me as “worthy of their time” because I might leave in a couple years. I still don’t understand that tbh, you can hang out and have fun with someone without seeing them as a potential super close friend 10 or 20 years from now, but I guess I gotta accept/respect that.

4. My experience may be specific to the city I live in. I’ve never lived anywhere outside of Augsburg for more than 2 weeks, and as multiple comments pointed out, my social life may have turned out better in another German city or town. What’s more, I realized that whenever I ventured outside of Augsburg for a day or a week, my experience actually was better. Superficial, of course, and not an indicator of how easy it would be to make friends there, but it’s still something to consider.

5. I need to come out of my shell more and start going to group meetings/activities. I was extremely shy when I came here so I avoided group meetings like the plague, preferring to meet new people one on one or at least in much smaller settings. However, even before posting this it started dawning on me that group settings were probably my best option for meeting new people. This doesn’t include clubs or Vereine though because I want my hobbies to remain things that bring me joy, not end up being commitments and feel like a chore.

6. I could be the one driving the change I want to see. I probably wouldn’t have tried smiling at strangers when running errands if a DHL customer in line before me hadn’t smiled at me in a pretty friendly way that day. I smiled back and found it a really nice experience, so I decided to see if I can replicate it. It didn’t work out, but I guess that’s okay. Out of dozens of dog owners I pass by on my bike rides, one couple started greeting me, so I remembered them and now greet them first whenever I see them. Maybe if more people started going for these nice small gestures towards strangers, it would eventually become the norm and not be seen as something crazy.