Dealing with Homesickness: A Practical Guide for Nepali Students in Germany

Homesickness rarely shows up in the first week. That week is too busy: registering your address, opening a bank account, finding the right lecture hall. It tends to arrive later, on a grey Sunday in November when the hostel kitchen is empty and your family is getting ready for Tihar without you. This guide is about that moment and what helps, from timing calls home so nobody is woken at 2 am to free counselling that many international students never hear about.

When it usually hits

Homesickness is easier to handle when you can see it coming. Watch for these points in your first year:

• Dashain and Tihar. They usually fall around the start of the winter semester, when you have no close friends yet and no holiday from classes.
• The first winter. Afternoons get dark early, the sky stays grey for days and people disappear indoors.
• Exam weeks. Stress and isolation feed each other, especially if you are also working shifts.
• Bad news from home. A parent's illness or news of a landslide in your district feels heavier when you cannot simply take a bus home.

Call home at times that suit both sides

Nepal runs on Nepal Time, UTC+5:45, all year. Germany moves its clocks forward on the last Sunday of March and back on the last Sunday of October, so Nepal is 3 hours 45 minutes ahead during German summer time and 4 hours 45 minutes ahead in winter. Evening calls from Germany are the trap: 9 pm in a German winter is already 1:45 am in Kathmandu.

In German summer time, add one hour to the Nepal column. One fixed weekly call often works better than constant messaging: your parents have something to look forward to, and you are not checking the family group between lectures.

Bring a little of home into your week

Small routines beat big gestures. Cook dal bhat on Sundays even if the rice and masala are not quite right; our guide to food and cooking in Germany helps with the shopping. Put Nepali festivals in your calendar and celebrate them with whoever is around, German classmates included; few people turn down sel roti. Keep a photo wall, a dhaka topi or a small puja corner in your room if that grounds you.

Before your family packs a bag of sukuti and ghee for you, read our packing list. Customs at German airports is strict about animal products from home, and watching a carefully packed bag of sukuti get confiscated is a sad first hour in a new country.

Build a life that is not only Nepali

Finding other Nepali students is easy and it helps; our guide to the Nepali community in Germany shows where to start. The risk is that the WhatsApp group becomes your entire social life. Homesickness eases faster when you have reasons to leave your room that have nothing to do with Nepal:

• University sports courses (Hochschulsport) put you in a room with the same people every week.
• A language tandem pairs you with a German student who wants to practise English while you practise German.
• Student groups for your subject or a hobby, or a volunteering slot, give your week a timetable outside lectures.
• A part-time job, within the student work limits, brings colleagues and routine.

Some low days are less about missing home than about German habits that feel cold at first: quiet trains, direct criticism, appointments for everything. Our guide to cultural adjustment explains the ones that confuse newcomers most.

When it is more than homesickness

Missing home is normal. Weeks of poor sleep, skipped classes, no appetite or a sense that nothing will get better are a different thing, and you do not have to manage them alone or hide them from your family.

Many Studierendenwerke, the student services organisations attached to universities, run psychological counselling for students. One example: the Studierendenwerk for Passau and Regensburg offers free, confidential counselling in German and English, in person, by phone or by video, and lists loneliness among the problems it helps with. Ask your international office which service covers your campus.

If you need to talk to someone right now, TelefonSeelsorge answers day and night on 0800 111 0 111, 0800 111 0 222 and 116 123. Calls are free and anonymous, and chat and email are also offered. Its website is in German, so if your German is still basic, the Studierendenwerk counselling above is the easier first step. In an emergency, call 112.

For parents in Nepal

Parents in Kathmandu, Pokhara or Biratnagar often ask what they can do from so far away. A few things help more than daily calls. Ask about the week, not only about marks and money. Agree on a call time instead of ringing whenever you are free. And do not treat one tearful call as proof the decision was wrong; the first winter is hard for many newcomers, and it passes. If your son or daughter sounds low for weeks, encourage them to book a session with the university's counselling service, which is confidential.