Not drug abusing, sorry. This text is about some organized and unorganized trip options I've or haven't participated.
First check-around was that 3 day train trip with guys of course and couple one day trips to cities in couple of cities located in this region. Since then I've done some more.
Paris trip organized by Studentwerk. For 99€ bus transportation to Paris, tour guide, and one night accommodation. Sounds good, no? Practically it was organized so that we left Karlsruhe around midnight on Friday by bus to arrive in Paris at 7 a.m.. There we drove around a little bit and the guide was telling nice but scarce details about historical locations. Perhaps 12 o'clock we finished touring with a bus, having spent a break at ho(s)tel. We took a metro from hotel to city center and the guide disappeared on that instance. After asking a round a lot (nobody knew exactly) I was quite sure that we were to meet him some hour later at Notre Dame. There then we had a rendezvous and headed to Eiffel tower. The guide offered to book river boat tickets to whoever wanted to participate, at group discount. At that point we had some separation of group and spent like one hour negotiating what we should do as some would like to go to the tower, some others not and whatsoever. After probably 2 hours of wasting time altogether in Eiffel park, we finally got to the tower. There our group was divided even more and I tagged along with some 3 or so guys for the river boat. After the boat, we as a small group decided to walk to Arc of Triumph and I took a metro with only one person from there back to hotel.
The next day we had scheduled departure at 1 p.m.. (already!??) and we were to hit Louvre at 10 o'clock for about one hour (laugh). One hour for a museum trough which a walk would be some 14 kilometers is almost an insult. Well on the good side, we had the guide again with us and therefore got past the fast growing line and for free. I separated from the group and walked around fast for that one hour and met some of the the guys again at metro stop on my way back to hotel. Louvre: check.
Summing up:
- Bus trip is no sleep. I was horribly tired and hungry when we were walking around Paris. Not exactly fun. There was no organized, predetermined, pause for eating in any point. I finally bought my self an 7€ Panini-kind-of-thing from the usually terribly expensive area surrounding Eiffel tower. It was comparably good investment containing quite extreme amount of cheese and filling me up so well that I got to sell remaining part to one fellow.
- I made one major idiotic act myself by buying new shoes just before the trip and using them there. They hurt my legs like hell! I didn't really care for a slightest bit to walk a meter more when we finally had reached the arc of Triumph.
- We didn't see Versailles at all and few lucky of us spent a little more than one hour in Louvre, others were there in that long queue and never reached indoors in time.
- We saw couple of historically important buildings from outside and got some very brief and almost negligible information of them, mainly expressed in German. Visited 2nd stand of Eiffel tower.
-Stay was in bunk beds of hotel Ibis budget wing. It's like a hostel facilities without the fun social interaction of hostels.
- I had couple of Hungarian friends there who I tagged along with, but there were some 3 more Bulgarians also who didn't speak proper English, nor German. So quite soon that whole group was speaking only Bulgarian, leaving me to annoying position.
- Wasted awfully lot of time because there wasn't actually any schedule on that trip after the bus tour and except for the Louvre.
Judgement: Go by yourself hitchhiking or something and stay couple of nights in some hostel. Definitely a city worth visiting but not in this way.
keskiviikko 18. joulukuuta 2013
tiistai 19. marraskuuta 2013
Some critics after over 2 month stay and comparison with facilities of Lappeenranta University of Technology
It's still generally good to live here as all the services I want for now are rather nearby and relatively cheap, but...
KIT campus is sad as it's just bunch of scattered buildings. In LUT of Lappeenranta, everything is nicely in one building making it more or less like a big home where you meet people from different schools and branches of science. In LUT everybody more or less go in every day trough the same main doors and pass the big dining hall or stay there for coffee or whatsoever. In KIT my 5 courses take place in 5 different buildings. There are no other visible activities happening during the same time so you won't see other people during breaks or just idling in the hallways excluding a few exceptions. It's yet different thing that does seeing other people actually lead to interaction but at least it feels more warm than just lurking into the lecture and sneaking out when it's already dark at streets with the other 30 course mates or so. Of course LUT hosts only for about 5000 students whereas KIT has 25 000 but still.. matter of design.
The big dining hall is also a separate building and certainly a cross-faculty meeting place, but it boasts huge queues during peak hours and nutritionally poor food (I wouldn't complain about taste though, but that ain't important factor for me anyway). Yeah you guessed it.. library is separate building also, like just everything.
Facilities are old and small, and poor. Maybe I was under too much expectations thinking of Germans as the ultimate masters of technology and efficiency and everything... well they are, they invent a lot, but they are terrible at implementing. Buildings are ages old and energy-inefficient, have barely nothing smart inside (ok wohoo there are projectors!), some headband microphones are clearly just coming as one professor tried to use some silly neckband with old school hand mic hanging from it producing zero amplification to sound, but luckily found himself a modern and working one after probably facing some feedback. Many classes or lecture halls seem to seriously lack electricity sockets as they clearly are from era before major break trough of laptops (or maybe they are just ahead of their time and anticipate leap in battery technology). One class keeps hardheadedly on taking place in such a class room where about 10 people (out of 40) don't have access to table.
Computers are scarce and sticky. For some reason first time when I used computer here in one computer class it was amazingly fast! I was impressed... only to find out that it was probably broken. All the later sessions on computer has been blood pressurizing experiences of pure hell thanks to many systematic internet failures (other computers experienced same problems simultaneously). During peak hours it's also rather troublesome task to find any free computer anywhere. Printing is cheap, some 3-4 cents for double sided black/white sheet, but only at central printer. You usually have to wait 0.5-2 hours because it has processing queue. And then you will fetch your finished print-work from a locker with student id indications. Somewhat complex but yeah works anyway. If you order many printouts, the central printer combines whatever orders it has received from you probably up to the point when it's your work's turn in the queue. They all come stapled together. So better to order one course's all available material one day and another's other day... If you don't have a nice heavy stapler at home. You can also print double sided at every computer class and there are not much queue but it costs some 6 cents a paper. I think in LUT printing costs 5-6 cents/sheet and every work can be chosen to be individually stapled and punctured for mapping. Here you have to puncture your own holes, even central printer doesn't have the option.
Earning ECTS feels mainly more laborious here than in LPR. These courses have quite a lot content, but on the other hand they are new to me and I probably don't have some of the base knowledge that some other students may have as these are master level courses. Anyway, you may expect to work rather hard here to survive. One course, namely Entrepreneurship, has proved to be incredibly boring bla bla bla course with no new insights. Others are still rather interesting and demanding.
Germans still don't use blinkers of their cars'! ..just saying.
Otherwise I seem to miss animals and nature here. In Finnish cities nature with exhaustive (soft surface) jogging routes are always relatively near. Here for some freaking reason they have asphalted paths in these few tiles of forest in central city. I guess one just has to humbly take some 10-15 min tram-trip to outskirts if willing to go run into real forest without asphalt.
Next week I'm off to Malaga and Granada, Spain, to relax a bit and a week after that seems to be snowboarding trip to Austria. Christmas is good time to recap the courses.. right?
KIT campus is sad as it's just bunch of scattered buildings. In LUT of Lappeenranta, everything is nicely in one building making it more or less like a big home where you meet people from different schools and branches of science. In LUT everybody more or less go in every day trough the same main doors and pass the big dining hall or stay there for coffee or whatsoever. In KIT my 5 courses take place in 5 different buildings. There are no other visible activities happening during the same time so you won't see other people during breaks or just idling in the hallways excluding a few exceptions. It's yet different thing that does seeing other people actually lead to interaction but at least it feels more warm than just lurking into the lecture and sneaking out when it's already dark at streets with the other 30 course mates or so. Of course LUT hosts only for about 5000 students whereas KIT has 25 000 but still.. matter of design.
The big dining hall is also a separate building and certainly a cross-faculty meeting place, but it boasts huge queues during peak hours and nutritionally poor food (I wouldn't complain about taste though, but that ain't important factor for me anyway). Yeah you guessed it.. library is separate building also, like just everything.
Facilities are old and small, and poor. Maybe I was under too much expectations thinking of Germans as the ultimate masters of technology and efficiency and everything... well they are, they invent a lot, but they are terrible at implementing. Buildings are ages old and energy-inefficient, have barely nothing smart inside (ok wohoo there are projectors!), some headband microphones are clearly just coming as one professor tried to use some silly neckband with old school hand mic hanging from it producing zero amplification to sound, but luckily found himself a modern and working one after probably facing some feedback. Many classes or lecture halls seem to seriously lack electricity sockets as they clearly are from era before major break trough of laptops (or maybe they are just ahead of their time and anticipate leap in battery technology). One class keeps hardheadedly on taking place in such a class room where about 10 people (out of 40) don't have access to table.
Computers are scarce and sticky. For some reason first time when I used computer here in one computer class it was amazingly fast! I was impressed... only to find out that it was probably broken. All the later sessions on computer has been blood pressurizing experiences of pure hell thanks to many systematic internet failures (other computers experienced same problems simultaneously). During peak hours it's also rather troublesome task to find any free computer anywhere. Printing is cheap, some 3-4 cents for double sided black/white sheet, but only at central printer. You usually have to wait 0.5-2 hours because it has processing queue. And then you will fetch your finished print-work from a locker with student id indications. Somewhat complex but yeah works anyway. If you order many printouts, the central printer combines whatever orders it has received from you probably up to the point when it's your work's turn in the queue. They all come stapled together. So better to order one course's all available material one day and another's other day... If you don't have a nice heavy stapler at home. You can also print double sided at every computer class and there are not much queue but it costs some 6 cents a paper. I think in LUT printing costs 5-6 cents/sheet and every work can be chosen to be individually stapled and punctured for mapping. Here you have to puncture your own holes, even central printer doesn't have the option.
Earning ECTS feels mainly more laborious here than in LPR. These courses have quite a lot content, but on the other hand they are new to me and I probably don't have some of the base knowledge that some other students may have as these are master level courses. Anyway, you may expect to work rather hard here to survive. One course, namely Entrepreneurship, has proved to be incredibly boring bla bla bla course with no new insights. Others are still rather interesting and demanding.
Germans still don't use blinkers of their cars'! ..just saying.
Otherwise I seem to miss animals and nature here. In Finnish cities nature with exhaustive (soft surface) jogging routes are always relatively near. Here for some freaking reason they have asphalted paths in these few tiles of forest in central city. I guess one just has to humbly take some 10-15 min tram-trip to outskirts if willing to go run into real forest without asphalt.
Next week I'm off to Malaga and Granada, Spain, to relax a bit and a week after that seems to be snowboarding trip to Austria. Christmas is good time to recap the courses.. right?
sunnuntai 10. marraskuuta 2013
Sports
Sport offering of KIT is fairly comprehensive: http://buchsys.sport.uni-karlsruhe.de/angebote/aktueller_zeitraum/index.html
10 € insurance payment is obligatory for a person who wish to attend any of those courses and sport courses themselves cost ~6-16 € per semester.
The not so funny part is that the subscribing period started on 14.10. at 9.00 a.m. and most courses were full 5 minutes after. The website experienced also hardships with staying up and proper functioning under pressure of thousands of activity hungry people.
I had no prior experience about rope climbing, but I just happened to bump into couple of friends there accidentally and they taught me how to ensure that my partner would stay alive and how to keep my own life also and after that I bought my own shoes and harness here and climb on Mondays when it's cheaper, 6-7€ entrance for unlimited time period. Renting gear costs 5.5€ if you don't have your own but i'd recommend buying it right away if you have any intention to continue every now and then. Altogether great hobby and good complementary action for bodybuilding.
I also attend HipHop class from KIT sport offering once a week. Annoying thing is that the class takes place from 21.00 till 22.30. Otherwise it's been this far quite nice. Unlike in Finland, here also some guys dance hip-hop and gender distribution is something like 5 men - 20 girls in our group. The hall where this class is run has good floor and is spacious enough. Mirrors are there but they are apparently very old and therefore bend image awfully.
Yet another activity is pair dance class taking place on every Wednesday for 2 hours from 8 p.m. It's completely free of charge and offered by local student organization. There we dance standard style dances with lead of an instructor. Audio systems are good and teaching is clear and progressing rather slow giving changes for those with 2 left legs and sometimes boring the life out of me. There are a little bit more guys than girls at the moment but it's fairly balanced and I haven't experienced problems getting a pair. Gentlemen get to choose every other and Ladies every other time so pairs are mainly constantly changing between every dance.
10 € insurance payment is obligatory for a person who wish to attend any of those courses and sport courses themselves cost ~6-16 € per semester.
The not so funny part is that the subscribing period started on 14.10. at 9.00 a.m. and most courses were full 5 minutes after. The website experienced also hardships with staying up and proper functioning under pressure of thousands of activity hungry people.
- Plan in advance what you would like to take, also the plan b's and c's.
- Read carefully course instruction: some courses don't take subscriptions on this date but have instead a meeting somewhere where they give password personally for appealing applicants
- About the gym (walk-in) of the school: I think you can go there to register up whenever you please, also before 14.10. after you have enrolled to school. I went there on 14.10. because I didn't yet know how my sport course selection would turn out to be and was told that next possible time for obligatory pre-examination and show-around would be in January; the gym was fully booked already and no exceptions for that. Class activities like bodypump or zumba etc. are a different matter and I guess there is space for 80€ semester fee. Overall costs of the walk-in gym would be some 175e for 6 months.
- I subsidised walk-in gym by going to commercial Venice Beach -gym on east side of centrum. It's open 24/7, costs 6e/week for a student and is fairly spacious and has good quality equipment. Minor flaw is that they have only 1 squatting rack and quite a toy-like-quality, disappointing weightlifters. However I'm able to do everything I could wish for there more or less and the price also includes variety of classes to participate. The gym also has mixed gender sauna open all the time. The contract is binding for 1 year but if you move out of city during that period, you get a certificate of unrolling as citizen from city office and by showing that can break the gym contract. Highly recommended.
I had no prior experience about rope climbing, but I just happened to bump into couple of friends there accidentally and they taught me how to ensure that my partner would stay alive and how to keep my own life also and after that I bought my own shoes and harness here and climb on Mondays when it's cheaper, 6-7€ entrance for unlimited time period. Renting gear costs 5.5€ if you don't have your own but i'd recommend buying it right away if you have any intention to continue every now and then. Altogether great hobby and good complementary action for bodybuilding.
I also attend HipHop class from KIT sport offering once a week. Annoying thing is that the class takes place from 21.00 till 22.30. Otherwise it's been this far quite nice. Unlike in Finland, here also some guys dance hip-hop and gender distribution is something like 5 men - 20 girls in our group. The hall where this class is run has good floor and is spacious enough. Mirrors are there but they are apparently very old and therefore bend image awfully.
Yet another activity is pair dance class taking place on every Wednesday for 2 hours from 8 p.m. It's completely free of charge and offered by local student organization. There we dance standard style dances with lead of an instructor. Audio systems are good and teaching is clear and progressing rather slow giving changes for those with 2 left legs and sometimes boring the life out of me. There are a little bit more guys than girls at the moment but it's fairly balanced and I haven't experienced problems getting a pair. Gentlemen get to choose every other and Ladies every other time so pairs are mainly constantly changing between every dance.
lauantai 2. marraskuuta 2013
Railtrip Frankfurt - Mainz - Bonn - Köln
We (5 man team) made 3 day - 2 night -trip to mentioned cities during holiday week after the end of German pre-course and before the beginning of lectures.
Start was at 10 a.m. after waiting for one oversleeper for one hour and first target was Frankfurt. Nevertheless quite good timing since it took something over 2 hours there and check in to hostel is available earliest at 1 p.m. so we got to drop our back bags right away.
The next morning we headed to Mainz with intention to visit 1-2 places on the way to Köln and to arrive there at evening. Mainz really is a beautiful city with nice atmosphere and it's landmark is rather huge cathedral with big fascinatingly-detail-rich sculptures inside.
After seeing that and strolling a little bit more, it was time to take train to Bonn. Bonn is the old capital of Germany and therefore culturally rich. It's also well known for being the home city of Beethoven. Hour was already quite late, around 6 p.m. so it wasn't possible to visit any potential museums or anything. Neither we had proper plans or map about locations of interest. There happened to be markets taking place and 1 kilo of grapes for 1 euro. Great bargain for sweetest grapes I've tasted but that was pretty much all the city had to offer for now.
The train trip down the riverside of Rhein was worthwhile. Between Mainz and Köln, we could see approximately 50 castles, some more and some less impressive, and also the landscape is something as such. Would be nice experience to have a boat cruise on Rhein.
 |
| The companions ready to hit the rail |
How: whole Germany train ticket for 5 persons in any day costs 68€. It covers buses, trams, REgional trains and InterREgional trains, but doesn't allow for utilization of faster CE or ICE trains, sadly. Those 2 types of trains are highly expensive and probably only CEO's and Ministers travel with them...
Hostel booking in advance for one night in Frankfurt in Five Elements (central location, in red lanter district, cheap happyhour coctails and spacious common room) and one night in Köln in The Black Sheep (20-30 min walk from old center, nice location, nice colorful rooms, nice showering facilities, quite small common room (kitchen)). Both were about 20€/person/night half a week in advance and highly recommendable. Sheets included, bring your own towel. We could have wanted to stay in Köln for other night to see some more, but the whole city was full booked.
Frankfurt am Main, a.k.a. Mainhattan. City of money. Fairly small city with 600 000 inhabitants, expensive streets and skyscrapers (tallest being 259m high Commerzbank Tower). Mainz tower is only one accessible for public and provides really worthy view at 200 meters (~4€ for students).
 |
| View from Mainz tower |
There would have been couple of interesting museums, most notably Naturmuseum Senckenberg, but we were too late to visit that. Frankfurt Stock Exchange is also one central point of interest to see. Oldest parts of the city lie in Römerberg, not visited this time. Frankfurt was the first city I've been with skyscrapers and mainly therefore an interesting experience.
We ate our stomachs full, and more, in a Chinese buffet with Sushi for a little less than 10€.
After strolling a while in the city, a beer would have tasted good, but it provided to be challenging task to find a pub. We visited one promising looking one, but inside an old guy came talking to me that "yes, you may stay, but we are over 60 year old men here discussing about impotence". I didn't too much look around, but friends noted that some of them were also kissing each other. So we bumped into a veteran gay impotence discussion club. We didn't stay there to find out whether or not we would have been solution to their problem.
Walking a little more, we saw a beer advertisement sunshade and went in to a cozy looking bar. There was interior space made of glass walls and bar counter in there, and out of that in the hallway of that building were some sofas and tables. Ok, fairly priced beer, we chose to stay for one. I wen't to toiled and saw there some gay concert advertisement poster. At least we had a good laugh and got to drink the beer to drive away biggest thirst.
9 p.m. or so we went back to the hostel and stood in the common room drinking and playing some pool and slept well after long day.
 |
| Opera |
The next morning we headed to Mainz with intention to visit 1-2 places on the way to Köln and to arrive there at evening. Mainz really is a beautiful city with nice atmosphere and it's landmark is rather huge cathedral with big fascinatingly-detail-rich sculptures inside.
 |
| Cathedral of Mainz |
 |
| Typical style of center of Bonn |
 |
| Some minor Roman ruins |
 |
| One of those castles, don't remember where |
We finally arrived in Köln at 9 a.m. perhaps and wen't to eat 6e hamburger/steak meals into a close by place called Barbossa or something. Köln is the proud city of Kölsch, local beer served in ridiculous 2dl glasses, to make people angry, I'd guess. Taste wasn't anything special. After that, it was time to go rest for the exploration of the city being in turn the next day, especially after finding that we would stay only 1 night in the city due to the full reservation books in hostels.
The big day in Köln: walking to center took about 30 min from the hostel and we had received a nice map from there with all the points of interests to see. There are lot's of churches but after seeing the one in Mainz, and when expecting for Kölner Dom, these were not much. Striking feature of Köln were those ugly concrete cubicles everywhere (Köln was pretty well levered down in WW2)! Oh a church, oh a monstrous building from soviet union, oh another church...
 |
| Definition of massive |
Köln is hometown of candy firm Haribo, has a nazi archive which we actually visited and which would have been quite interesting with good German skills (no English text anywhere, ofc), chocolate museum, a Roman museum with some outrageous 6e entrance fee, didn't go there, hey it's not Rome anyway and then the Dom. We paid the couple of euros to climb the tower up to sight stand at height of some 100m. It was a nice experience even though the views are not very good because the place is so thickly covered with a cage to prevent suicide activities probably. The Dom is simply massive. It was impossible to make a decent picture of it because it just won't fit in one meaningful photo. Also it has astonishing amount of detail in it's construct, but hard to say if it's very beautiful or not. Worth experiencing definitely. One day was well enough to see the main points of the city, and to see too many concrete cubicles but they also say that both Köln and Frankfurt have very lively nightlife. Don't know about that then since to me it seems to be the (mostly boring) same basically everywhere. That area remained unstudied.
Six hour or so train back to Karlsruhe was rather ass numbing experience.
 |
| The city of Beton |
perjantai 25. lokakuuta 2013
Course selection and 1st week of lectures
Almost three weeks have passed since my last script. German lecture (torture) is happily behind, rolling all the responsibility of my lingual progress into my own hands, and finally lectures and sports have begun.
The final exam of German course was partially simplified which was very disappointing yet maybe necessary since I screwed up my text production and maybe grammar part also. The results come on 4th of November. At the moment I'm practicing my German daily at home with help of Quizlet.com and by reading old school books and watching some TV.
About course selection. I made my final choices and mapping on Sunday evening, last day before semester start. It was rather time consuming since courses have to be checked from Modulehandbücher(pdf) one by one and exam dates (the list is in German and don't have course codes, so if you use English handbook as I did, it's some excess work to trace back the German course names from German handbook, so better list both names in first place or only German one) ensured from separate list. This is very important since many courses have their exams on the very same date and even in the case they are not, it's smart move to have some time between the exams to be able to prepare. I've heard some rumors that it's possible to ask for oral exam and it's individually decided by the responsible teacher. Maximum grade to get from oral exam is "pass". In addition, I had to discard maybe 50% of my initial seems-interesting-course-list due to overlap of lecture hours. What I ended up with, was 6 courses of which 2 are in German and of which one is intensive course lectured in end November. I also attended one interesting course in German as extra as I don't have any classes on Monday otherwise. It has overlapping exam date but I may yet ask for the oral exam. Here you don't register for courses, only for exams. I.e. one may just walk into interesting lectures and stay or leave.
My current course list seems like:
-Real Estate Economics and Sustainability Part 1: Basics and Valuation (german)
-Basics of Liberalized Energy Markets
-Supply Chain Management in der Automobilindustrie (german)
-Business and IT Service Management
-Management Accounting 2
-Entrepreneurship
So, something quite different from Finance or Economics, because I feel these have far more to offer for me: a great opportunity to broaden my business knowledge.
This far the lectures have been good. All the lecturers are capable, seemingly experienced speakers. German has been clear though very fast. I was able to understand maybe 50-70% of what lecturers said, but in addition both courses have good downloadable materials. And I also recorded the lectures with my phone if I find interest to listen to them again. The pace of lectures feels quite much faster than in Lappeenranta, where I quite often relied on self-studying to avoid death by boredom.
The final exam of German course was partially simplified which was very disappointing yet maybe necessary since I screwed up my text production and maybe grammar part also. The results come on 4th of November. At the moment I'm practicing my German daily at home with help of Quizlet.com and by reading old school books and watching some TV.
About course selection. I made my final choices and mapping on Sunday evening, last day before semester start. It was rather time consuming since courses have to be checked from Modulehandbücher(pdf) one by one and exam dates (the list is in German and don't have course codes, so if you use English handbook as I did, it's some excess work to trace back the German course names from German handbook, so better list both names in first place or only German one) ensured from separate list. This is very important since many courses have their exams on the very same date and even in the case they are not, it's smart move to have some time between the exams to be able to prepare. I've heard some rumors that it's possible to ask for oral exam and it's individually decided by the responsible teacher. Maximum grade to get from oral exam is "pass". In addition, I had to discard maybe 50% of my initial seems-interesting-course-list due to overlap of lecture hours. What I ended up with, was 6 courses of which 2 are in German and of which one is intensive course lectured in end November. I also attended one interesting course in German as extra as I don't have any classes on Monday otherwise. It has overlapping exam date but I may yet ask for the oral exam. Here you don't register for courses, only for exams. I.e. one may just walk into interesting lectures and stay or leave.
My current course list seems like:
-Real Estate Economics and Sustainability Part 1: Basics and Valuation (german)
-Basics of Liberalized Energy Markets
-Supply Chain Management in der Automobilindustrie (german)
-Business and IT Service Management
-Management Accounting 2
-Entrepreneurship
So, something quite different from Finance or Economics, because I feel these have far more to offer for me: a great opportunity to broaden my business knowledge.
This far the lectures have been good. All the lecturers are capable, seemingly experienced speakers. German has been clear though very fast. I was able to understand maybe 50-70% of what lecturers said, but in addition both courses have good downloadable materials. And I also recorded the lectures with my phone if I find interest to listen to them again. The pace of lectures feels quite much faster than in Lappeenranta, where I quite often relied on self-studying to avoid death by boredom.
sunnuntai 6. lokakuuta 2013
Volksfest in Cannstatter Wasen and some impressions
Finnish mafia represented by 4 members, backed up by my flatmate and her friends, were attending Cannstatter Wasen, the not so infamous sibling festival of Oktoberfest. Cannstatter is a suburb of Stuttgart and the fests are about 50-75% of the size of Oktoberfests, and with negligible amount of tourists! So get your Lederhosens or Drindl on and head out to experience something extraordinary and impressive!There were some 10 beer tents in festival area each spacious enough for some 5-10 thousand people. Beer is served in 1 liter mugs to the table and costs 9 euro. A bit expensive but definitely worth it as the festival itself doesn't have any entrance fee or other extra burden. There are also some amusement park rides at the area, of which the biggest we greatly enjoyed after 3 mugs of potent beverage. The tents are mainly free entry from opening time of 11.00 on until 16.30 from which on you have to have a reservation to a table. We enjoyed our stay for about 4 hours and headed out for other greener pastures, unfortunately found impossible to discover.
Minor parties and hangarounds keep on going almost every day if one asks around a bit, but nothing seriously worth mentioning in those. Typical enjoyable evenings with good company, music and beverages.
After 2 weeks of language course I'm a bit frustrated. We had the selection test to define our lingual capabilities and thereafter to divide us into meaningful groups, but yeah B1.1 actually undermines my German understanding quite a lot and classes have been sometimes extremely boring. But well on the other hand, I had very little interest to study German in a class now and harder course could have been rather troublesome. Anyway if one feels capable of doing more and has enthusiasm doing so, it's possible to swap for a harder course in the beginning. Other bothering thins is that we have 4 different teachers each teaching more or less different areas. Grammar teacher is clear role but the other 3's roles are at least to me rather indistinguishable and perhaps overlapping and at least not building into one meaningful goal letting the whole remain pretty confusing and frustrating. To sum up: some classes are very useful and interesting and some will bore you to brink of death. Note: Demand for challenge, it's worth it.
I took the big ball to myself and decided not to attend further language courses here after this one. I have my old German school books here with me and they cover quiet a wide area of situations, up till B2.2 or C1 level I think. Most important thing however is to interact with local people. The timetable of this intensive course is quite shackling classes lasting from 14.00 to 17.15 every workday not leaving too much possibilities to plan anything time taking during day times. There's now one week German remaining and then one free week before actual courses begin. We have some initial plan to rent a car and go touring around.
Oh yeah and about traffic! Bike is very nice mean to get around here, but one has to really pay attention. I've seen some pretty random maneuvers by car drivers and they quite rarely use blinkers! Also a bike drivers should really bother to wave hand signs when cornering or doing pretty much anything. I was almost rammed by another bike coming from behind about double the speed of mine when I was taking about 10 degrees very light left. Clearly his fault but yeah it would have definitely been worthwhile to check my rear wholly. Also it's better not to trust pointing down triangle or green lights!
perjantai 27. syyskuuta 2013
Prices and orientation week
First of all some minimum price comparison to Finland:
-Milk liter costs 0.60e here and about 0.90e back in Finland
-Freshly baked bread from a supermarket is 2-2.5e/kg, a bit above 3e(?) in Finland
-Beer from a store excluding pants is some 0.5e/litre comparing to Finnish highly taxed 1.9e liter price
-In a bar 0.5 liter pint is about 3.5e
-Chicken meat 6e/kg vs. about 9e/kg
-Minced meat 4.5/kg vs. 5.9e/kg
-Pita kebab or gyros or such basic fast foods seem to be about 4/5 or a bit less of Finnish prices
Oh and at campus eatery there are 7 lines, one of which is all Schnitschels(!!) (a battered steak, pig meat) and price is about 2.65 (there are some differences). I would guess rather tasty and not so healthy. It's always a good plan to find an apartment with cooking facilities if you want to keep your diet wholesome and healthy.
Oh and at campus eatery there are 7 lines, one of which is all Schnitschels(!!) (a battered steak, pig meat) and price is about 2.65 (there are some differences). I would guess rather tasty and not so healthy. It's always a good plan to find an apartment with cooking facilities if you want to keep your diet wholesome and healthy.
Approximating from these food products are about 30% cheaper here and alcohol costs only 1/3 of Finnish prices. From supermarkets Aldi and Lidl are the cheapest but some products seem to have quite the same price in more expensive stores also like Rewe or Penny. There are couple bigger shopping centers or concentrations of stores in Karlsruhe: Europa Platz at the west side of center and Ettlinger Tor at the east side.
I've been in Germany now for almost 2 weeks and the orientation week is finally about over! It's been great time but also exhausting. There were only 4 actual important events: welcome speech where we got new back bags and important information vouchers, enrollment to the university, opening of back accounts and language test (45 multiple choices on a PC).
Then the fun part: every day some bars and/or cheap restaurants and nightclubs with other exchange students and tutors. It's completely voluntary to attend, but it has been a pleasure to do so even though it would have been sometimes very tempting to stay in bed in the middle of all that haste. Club culture seems to be pretty similar to Finnish one, quite dull. I haven't yet seen people doing any real dance moves, just the same basic small motion jamming. Some places were really crowded and hooooot but well, that just makes up the good feeling right?! I usually don't care to stay until morning hours and prefer to leave at about 1-2 o' clock. There are some more expensive exquisite clubs in the town and lots and lots of bars and sport bars and beer houses and food places, cocktail bars and whatsoever options for nightlife. Footnote: they say that in Karlsruhe the girls-to-overall ratio is about 1/3.
There were some other events also. On Tuesday was a photo rally where randomly generated groups would have to go to different checkpoints and make some interesting group photos. Interesting part was a quest to do harlem shake in a shopping mall! Scary and fun, as I was to be the solo dancer. On Thursday we did a karaoke performance as tutor groups and performed in one local bar at night. Realizing that singing is only a part of the show, we did some short and simple, yet nice, choreography about Britney Spears' song Oops I Did It Again and ended up on 2nd place out of 15 groups losing only to some men dressed up in pink ladys' dresses with very gayish make up and having girl's as a background choir. Not bad.
On Friday we visited the city of Heidelberg, which avoided bombardment in the world wars (btw. Karlsruhe was for a big part levered down during the 2nd WW). 15€ ticket included train ticket to Heidelberg and back and about 2.5 hour guided tour in the old city where oldest building is about 400 years old and most are from end of 19th century because the Sun King of France burned the city back then. Heidelberg is also a location for a beautiful medieval castle where's wine barrel of some 5 meter in diameter. There we also did some laborious yet rewarding hill hiking. A top of the hill, in addition to nice views, lies amphitheater-like-a-show-place built by the Nazis (it was really impressive) and some Roman ruins (didn't go to check those because we wanted to avoid darkness on return trip) and burned ruins of a monastery from 15th century. Altogether a very successful trip.
Yesterday, on Saturday, was time for some serious sports, a game of flunky ball! Involving beer, beer, beer, onion, bottle, oh and beer. In a park. And FINALLY the sun showed up also after everyday cloud cover and rain for last 10 days. Yep, this should be one of the sunniest cities in Germany (in my *$#!). We played 4 games as a superb team consisting of 3 Spanish chicas muy guapas and me, won 2 and lost 2. Was fun and that some 6 bottles of beer did what it's brewed for.
In addition during this week, there were 2 barbecues which of neither I was able to attend due to lack of time. A small shame is that the orientation week is so beer focused. If you are an absolutist then it's up to you whether or not to like watching people drinking but I didn't actually see anyone overly drunk during the whole week so it's probably not that annoying as it can be. Couple of evenings I drank like 2 beers and noone was pushing for more. Even in drinking games nobody really minded drinking pretty slow and in small sips and the feeling was high.
And finally about the Erasmus people. The great majority are Spanish, then there are lots of French people and some from eastern European countries, South America (biggest group are Brazilians), one great Egyptian guy, and plenty others. There are, me included, 6 Fins in this Erasmus group at KIT, and 2 Swedish speaking Fins studying at Uni of App. Sci. None of these I knew before except one who was my room and group mate in army: quite big was the surprise when we realized we've seen before! I've learned to know some 50 new nice people this week and expect that trend to continue. Our tutors are very nice, active and helpful also. I only hope that people will stay more or less blended and not to stick too much with their countrymen, a phenomenon already showing some serious signs of existence.
Today the O-phase week culminates in form of international dinner which we are about to attend as a group of Finnish friends preparing some Finnish dish.
Tomorrow starts the 3-week-long language course. And perhaps I also get to visit Gymnastics class. I'm already eagerly waiting for some sports to begin because the offering is quite a lot broader here than in Lappeenranta:
http://buchsys.sport.uni-karlsruhe.de/angebote/aktueller_zeitraum/index.html
I've been in Germany now for almost 2 weeks and the orientation week is finally about over! It's been great time but also exhausting. There were only 4 actual important events: welcome speech where we got new back bags and important information vouchers, enrollment to the university, opening of back accounts and language test (45 multiple choices on a PC).
Then the fun part: every day some bars and/or cheap restaurants and nightclubs with other exchange students and tutors. It's completely voluntary to attend, but it has been a pleasure to do so even though it would have been sometimes very tempting to stay in bed in the middle of all that haste. Club culture seems to be pretty similar to Finnish one, quite dull. I haven't yet seen people doing any real dance moves, just the same basic small motion jamming. Some places were really crowded and hooooot but well, that just makes up the good feeling right?! I usually don't care to stay until morning hours and prefer to leave at about 1-2 o' clock. There are some more expensive exquisite clubs in the town and lots and lots of bars and sport bars and beer houses and food places, cocktail bars and whatsoever options for nightlife. Footnote: they say that in Karlsruhe the girls-to-overall ratio is about 1/3.
There were some other events also. On Tuesday was a photo rally where randomly generated groups would have to go to different checkpoints and make some interesting group photos. Interesting part was a quest to do harlem shake in a shopping mall! Scary and fun, as I was to be the solo dancer. On Thursday we did a karaoke performance as tutor groups and performed in one local bar at night. Realizing that singing is only a part of the show, we did some short and simple, yet nice, choreography about Britney Spears' song Oops I Did It Again and ended up on 2nd place out of 15 groups losing only to some men dressed up in pink ladys' dresses with very gayish make up and having girl's as a background choir. Not bad.
On Friday we visited the city of Heidelberg, which avoided bombardment in the world wars (btw. Karlsruhe was for a big part levered down during the 2nd WW). 15€ ticket included train ticket to Heidelberg and back and about 2.5 hour guided tour in the old city where oldest building is about 400 years old and most are from end of 19th century because the Sun King of France burned the city back then. Heidelberg is also a location for a beautiful medieval castle where's wine barrel of some 5 meter in diameter. There we also did some laborious yet rewarding hill hiking. A top of the hill, in addition to nice views, lies amphitheater-like-a-show-place built by the Nazis (it was really impressive) and some Roman ruins (didn't go to check those because we wanted to avoid darkness on return trip) and burned ruins of a monastery from 15th century. Altogether a very successful trip.
 |
| Sunset over the city |
 |
| Neckar -river |
 |
| Heidelberg Castle |
Yesterday, on Saturday, was time for some serious sports, a game of flunky ball! Involving beer, beer, beer, onion, bottle, oh and beer. In a park. And FINALLY the sun showed up also after everyday cloud cover and rain for last 10 days. Yep, this should be one of the sunniest cities in Germany (in my *$#!). We played 4 games as a superb team consisting of 3 Spanish chicas muy guapas and me, won 2 and lost 2. Was fun and that some 6 bottles of beer did what it's brewed for.
In addition during this week, there were 2 barbecues which of neither I was able to attend due to lack of time. A small shame is that the orientation week is so beer focused. If you are an absolutist then it's up to you whether or not to like watching people drinking but I didn't actually see anyone overly drunk during the whole week so it's probably not that annoying as it can be. Couple of evenings I drank like 2 beers and noone was pushing for more. Even in drinking games nobody really minded drinking pretty slow and in small sips and the feeling was high.
And finally about the Erasmus people. The great majority are Spanish, then there are lots of French people and some from eastern European countries, South America (biggest group are Brazilians), one great Egyptian guy, and plenty others. There are, me included, 6 Fins in this Erasmus group at KIT, and 2 Swedish speaking Fins studying at Uni of App. Sci. None of these I knew before except one who was my room and group mate in army: quite big was the surprise when we realized we've seen before! I've learned to know some 50 new nice people this week and expect that trend to continue. Our tutors are very nice, active and helpful also. I only hope that people will stay more or less blended and not to stick too much with their countrymen, a phenomenon already showing some serious signs of existence.
Today the O-phase week culminates in form of international dinner which we are about to attend as a group of Finnish friends preparing some Finnish dish.
Tomorrow starts the 3-week-long language course. And perhaps I also get to visit Gymnastics class. I'm already eagerly waiting for some sports to begin because the offering is quite a lot broader here than in Lappeenranta:
http://buchsys.sport.uni-karlsruhe.de/angebote/aktueller_zeitraum/index.html
torstai 12. syyskuuta 2013
Practicalities
I'm 25 year old financing and economics student from Lappeenranta University of Technology and now finally after 4 years of studies I felt it's time to go for a student exchange while this possibility for unique experience still exists.
My application process to Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany was somewhat unordinary. I received negative decision from another place that I first applied to on 18th of June and at that point deadlines for applying processes had already taken place for most of other prominent destinations.
Luckily enough representatives of KIT agreed to take in my application a couple of days too late. All the necessary information was provided by their coordinator by e-mail. Picking courses for learning agreement was a bit laborious but I managed to find some fitting ones. Oh and mainly KIT provides business engineering type of courses because students here haven't pure business programs but business combined with some technological aspect instead.
The application process and preparations were rather simple since we are in Europe anyway. Had to provide copy of passport, European healthcare card, passport picture, some certificate of lingual capability ,which in my case was a copy of my high school diploma with grade of M from short German, and a small letter of assurance written by me, pay about 140€ of studying fees (incl. voluntary German, 50€), filled enrollment application and little else. Nothing problematic. Hunting for a flat is the problem.
There's a dormitory but KIT officially announces that housing situation is challenging and I heard a rumor that there's like 40 000 people in queue and 200 rooms changing owner each year. Probably exaggerated but nevertheless one should not rely on it. I didn't even contact housing official of KIT since it was clearly stated that they can't provide houses for all appliers, but rather started looking for a flat from free markets through facebook group "KIT WG Börse" and ingenious rent-house-portal www.wg-gesucht.de. In that portal one can save her application as a template and easily send it as a reply for a number of different flat offerings.
I spammed some 30 housing advertisements with basically only one condition: smoking not allowed. Maybe 5-7 of those 30 advertisers replied. There's yet another problem. Many won't promise or agree to anything without seeing in person. Well I got lucky and had an Skype "interview" with a very nice girl who has an internship during this winter semester, which is the length of my stay also. She agreed to under-rent her room in 2-room student apartment already based on that interview, which occurred some 2 weeks before I actually came to Germany. We made official contracts here so until that it was of course a question of trust, which neither of us didn't seem to lack.
Now I have myself a fully furnished about 16 sq.m. room with shared kitchen and bathroom right in the center of Karlsruhe, which is a middle size city with population of approx. 300 thousand. The house is old apartment building but interior seems pretty recently renovated with parquet floor. The rent is 390€/month including gas, water, electricity, heating and WiFi. Feels pretty reasonable to me (at least in comparison with super expensive Finland). Yeah it's girl's room but it's decorated with fine taste and I kind of like it. At the moment I actually haven't a roommate. Some guy who lives here will come back in December after his internship ends, but it remains unclear is his room to be rented meanwhile or not. Oh and I also got right to use this girl's bike, pretty friendly and nice.
So here am I in Germany since 9.9. and orientation week is about to begin on Monday 16th Sep. List of important dates and events was provided to e-mail along with the letter of approval. After orientation week there's 3-week-long voluntary German intensive course which I will attend and the actual studies begin in 23rd October or something.
Last words about language requirements: Some A2 or B1 level German is required. I don't quite know about those ratings and certainly don't know how is my Sprachkentnisse on that scale, but I have studied German from 5th class in elementary school to end of high school. I changed it to easier middle length group in high school though, which is meant for those who had begin it in 7th class. I didn't exactly shine in that group either, and wrote short (for those who begin in high school, study 3 years) German but with rather good grade M, equal to 8 on scale of 4 to 10 (best). Summing it up, I should have quite a vocabulary sleeping in depths of my brains. I plan to take a couple courses taught in German so that will be my purgatory. I'll know a lot more of my capabilities after the Intensive course. Anyway, it would be possible here to fill that 30 ECTS quota solely with courses taught in English.
P.s. Nearest international airport is probably in Stuttgart and there's train station right beneath which connects to Karlsruhe. My one-way ticket was 114€.
Next blog will be about survival and price levels here in Karlsruhe.
-Lauri
My application process to Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany was somewhat unordinary. I received negative decision from another place that I first applied to on 18th of June and at that point deadlines for applying processes had already taken place for most of other prominent destinations.
Luckily enough representatives of KIT agreed to take in my application a couple of days too late. All the necessary information was provided by their coordinator by e-mail. Picking courses for learning agreement was a bit laborious but I managed to find some fitting ones. Oh and mainly KIT provides business engineering type of courses because students here haven't pure business programs but business combined with some technological aspect instead.
The application process and preparations were rather simple since we are in Europe anyway. Had to provide copy of passport, European healthcare card, passport picture, some certificate of lingual capability ,which in my case was a copy of my high school diploma with grade of M from short German, and a small letter of assurance written by me, pay about 140€ of studying fees (incl. voluntary German, 50€), filled enrollment application and little else. Nothing problematic. Hunting for a flat is the problem.
There's a dormitory but KIT officially announces that housing situation is challenging and I heard a rumor that there's like 40 000 people in queue and 200 rooms changing owner each year. Probably exaggerated but nevertheless one should not rely on it. I didn't even contact housing official of KIT since it was clearly stated that they can't provide houses for all appliers, but rather started looking for a flat from free markets through facebook group "KIT WG Börse" and ingenious rent-house-portal www.wg-gesucht.de. In that portal one can save her application as a template and easily send it as a reply for a number of different flat offerings.
I spammed some 30 housing advertisements with basically only one condition: smoking not allowed. Maybe 5-7 of those 30 advertisers replied. There's yet another problem. Many won't promise or agree to anything without seeing in person. Well I got lucky and had an Skype "interview" with a very nice girl who has an internship during this winter semester, which is the length of my stay also. She agreed to under-rent her room in 2-room student apartment already based on that interview, which occurred some 2 weeks before I actually came to Germany. We made official contracts here so until that it was of course a question of trust, which neither of us didn't seem to lack.
Now I have myself a fully furnished about 16 sq.m. room with shared kitchen and bathroom right in the center of Karlsruhe, which is a middle size city with population of approx. 300 thousand. The house is old apartment building but interior seems pretty recently renovated with parquet floor. The rent is 390€/month including gas, water, electricity, heating and WiFi. Feels pretty reasonable to me (at least in comparison with super expensive Finland). Yeah it's girl's room but it's decorated with fine taste and I kind of like it. At the moment I actually haven't a roommate. Some guy who lives here will come back in December after his internship ends, but it remains unclear is his room to be rented meanwhile or not. Oh and I also got right to use this girl's bike, pretty friendly and nice.
So here am I in Germany since 9.9. and orientation week is about to begin on Monday 16th Sep. List of important dates and events was provided to e-mail along with the letter of approval. After orientation week there's 3-week-long voluntary German intensive course which I will attend and the actual studies begin in 23rd October or something.
Last words about language requirements: Some A2 or B1 level German is required. I don't quite know about those ratings and certainly don't know how is my Sprachkentnisse on that scale, but I have studied German from 5th class in elementary school to end of high school. I changed it to easier middle length group in high school though, which is meant for those who had begin it in 7th class. I didn't exactly shine in that group either, and wrote short (for those who begin in high school, study 3 years) German but with rather good grade M, equal to 8 on scale of 4 to 10 (best). Summing it up, I should have quite a vocabulary sleeping in depths of my brains. I plan to take a couple courses taught in German so that will be my purgatory. I'll know a lot more of my capabilities after the Intensive course. Anyway, it would be possible here to fill that 30 ECTS quota solely with courses taught in English.
P.s. Nearest international airport is probably in Stuttgart and there's train station right beneath which connects to Karlsruhe. My one-way ticket was 114€.
Next blog will be about survival and price levels here in Karlsruhe.
-Lauri
Tilaa:
Blogitekstit (Atom)