Being a regular at a bar offers routine and a sense of civic involvement, but real relationships can only be built at home When I moved to Germany from the United States in the spring of 2017, I was ready for a change. After the political nightmare that had played out the previous November, I was waking up in the middle of most nights to check if some new trauma had swept the nation?if I managed to fall asleep at all. The atmosphere at my tiny liberal arts college in New England was hostile in a way that had become suffocating, and I was experiencing a kind of emotional fatigue I had never felt before. Germany, which at the time was accepting more refugees than any other part of the developed world, promised a safe haven, a place of rest. So, equipped with a rudimentary knowledge of German and even less cultural context (beyond far too many names of dead philosophers), I packed my bags and landed in Heidelberg, a small city in the south of Germany. Designed around a large public university, Heidelberg was nothing like the tiny, cloistered campus I had left behind. There were museums and bars and cafes, buzzing with the promise of community. Consequently, I did what everyone tells you to do when you?re in a new place. I went to pub crawls and movie nights and receptions. I networked and drank with perfect strangers and smiled patiently at the men (yes, plural) who asked me if India really was the rape capital of the world. I developed an impeccable public face, adroit...