Germany Reflection

My time in Germany was an interesting experience. To prepare I read a few books on German culture during the eight and a half hour Air India flight from Chicago to Frankfurt. I didn’t find the airline quite as bad as some people had suggested. I spent my first night in Frankfurt at the Hotel Anna where there was an international student discount. On my way out I asked the gentleman at the reception the cheapest route to the train station and he gave me vague directions to the nearest tram. About half way there his directions failed me and, although I now know that I was going the right way, I was unsure of where I was. I of course packed too much luggage and was finding it troublesome to lug it the several city blocks to the tram. I broke out my pocket German language guidebook and asked someone if I was heading the right way. He was kind enough to help me get my luggage to the tram stop and show me how to use the automated ticketing machine. From here I made my way to the train station and got on the first of many trains that I’d take while in Germany.

I did not have any German language experience prior to arriving in Germany, and it was my first time traveling internationally, so all of this was new to me. Throughout the course of my stay I picked up enough German to get around but I usually still need a dictionary to translate uncommon words.

I checked into my dorm at Wileystrasse and met several other ICEP/IEEP students from Kettering and one girl from China. The Chinese girl and I were lucky because the student tutor who was sent to pick us up at the train station had a car (small as it was); I heard stories of another student tutor who showed up to pick up Wileystrasse students on his bike! Wileystrasse is located in Neu-Ulm, which is in a different state than Ulm and the main train station, so those unfortunate students wound up sharing a taxi to get to their dorm which is about 30 minutes away. The Kettering people mostly all knew each other and hung out together, and there were no other Rose students at Wileystrasse, so I found Wileystrasse a rather uneventful place to live. I shared a bathroom with a 30-year-old German auto-mechanic student who went home to Stuttgart on weekends and wasn’t too sociable to begin with. I stopped getting invited to parties and dinners when people realized I didn’t have any money. I couldn’t even afford the little outings that the Erasmus group put together.

Classes went well. The teachers were easy enough to understand on most days as their English was better than some of the visiting professors at my own college. The work load was acceptable and the material was well paced. I assume I got A’s or B’s in all of my classes but it’s been over a month and my school still doesn’t have the German transcript which was supposed to be mailed.

The best part of my German experience was during Pentecost break when I was able to meet up with a class from my school who was taking a sight-seeing trip across Germany. We started in Frankfurt and took a boat trip up the Rhine River so we stopped in towns like Bacharach and Boppard. Then we took a bus to Berlin, stopping in towns like Eisenach, Jena and Weimar on the way. Living in Ulm/Neu-Ulm is interesting, but to get the real German experience you must venture out and see the northern and eastern parts of the country. Each region has its own culture and tastes.

By this point I had a student loan finally come through so I was able to start enjoying Europe. By using trains and cheap airlines like Ryan Air I got to see Venice, Austria, and most importantly Ireland. I’m actually of Irish heritage – I don’t have a drop of German blood in me – so making it up there was important to me. I didn’t know it was so cheap to travel inside Europe so I didn’t know that this was something that I’d be able to do before I came. I only learned of Ryan Air from overhearing all of the Kettering students talking about what country they were going to so-and-so weekend. I think getting out and seeing Europe was also a big aspect of my study abroad experience. Learning about Germany is one thing, but one should also be able to take in the contrasts that Europe provides.

I found German History to be a good class, and enjoyed the field trip to Munich. Since everyone is an engineer it’s hard to find my own enthusiasm shared by my classmates, but I think this was a good addition to the curriculum. The local field trip to the Gold Oschen brewery the day previous was also a good idea since this was the first time I got to tour one. Alcohol was certainly an important part of the German and European experience since in America I’m not old enough to legally drink but while over there I was. From the German history teacher’s bier gardens in Munich to the German language teacher’s schinken bier in class, we were able to sample a good amount.

The biggest problem I had was at the end with the “internship.” The definition of that word in America must be different than in Germany. I assumed that I would be placed at some local company working, but instead I was given a lab assistant roll to a professor on campus. It was very disorganized. It took weeks for the professor to get me the materials and then come to turn out he didn’t have the right parts for me to even accomplish my job. He and his actual lab assistant had no regular hours so half the time when I’d spend the half hour to travel from Wileystrasse to campus, I couldn’t find either of them around. I wound up just doing a translation of the project documentation from German to English.

All in all it was a good study abroad. I got to do a lot of things that I never thought I’d get to do due to financial limitations imposed by our college system in America. If only we could figure out tuition-free undergraduate education like Europe has, we’d be set.