Exams

Ok finally something important. Exams enrollment here are a bit fuzzy.

1st: the enrollment period varies per exam quite arbitrarily! Usually, but only usually, it ends a few (2-3) days before the exam takes place. I, however, had one exam for which the period closed 21 days before the exam, and I missed that by one day. No late enrollment was possible! Also the enrollment window stays open for varying time. For this exam it had been open for months! For others typically 1 week or whatsoever. They might not be told in materials, being maybe told in class or at least when asked from the course secretariat (or lecturer).

Enrolling process: For most exams in WIWI (unlike in Maschinenbau or some other faculties) as an Erasmus -student you sign up in Meine Studiume -portal. However, if you don't see a course listed there, then online sign up isn't available for Erasmus. In that case you can ask for a blue paper from the course secretary. With this paper you go to student office or somewhere, I don't quite remember and after you have the stamps from there you bring it back to secretary, or to whoever instructed to. This paper process was typical for my engineering friends, but for most business courses, the online enrollment should work. Always confirm the way beforehand! The courses are visible in the list throughout whole year and if they are not there, ask for instructions!

2st: you got 2 changes per exam. The second exam typically takes place some half an year after the first one! Good time to forget everything and start all over.

At this moment the exam calendar can be found under: https://www.wiwi.kit.edu/english/pruefungstermine.php
You should in my opinion check this already when planning your course selection for the semester.
The lists for different faculties are located elsewhere, use google maybe.

Results can be published where-ever. Meaning, on faculty website or physical wall, or trough study-portal ILIAS or even by Email I guess, maybe with smoke signals also if sky is clear and wind limited. Notes will eventually come to "mein studiumen" -portal also but it may take some 2-3 months as they go automatically trough appeal process before being finalized. During this period you could go whine about your grade on a certain date given somewhere.

Prepare well! Students are crowding the whole library trough the whole semester, but during exam weeks they do it already from 8 a.m. onwards! If you enter library after that, you can't find a place! Just to give you the idea how seriously some people take the exams, and for a reason sometimes. I found SCC computer rooms after semester end to be rather quiet and empty! They are probably meant for the purpose but no questions were asked. You better have earplugs or something though because there is quite always at least one group working and speaking. I used stopwatch to clock my preparations because that's good way for me to focus on a matter I have limited interest in. I spent some 20 hours for writing and rehearsing Entrepreneurship, 40 hours for Management accounting 2, 40 hours for Business and IT service management, 40 for Immobilienwirtschaft und Nachhaltigkeit. Entrepreneurship yielded 3.0, and BITSEM 2.7 as grades. I missed the date for MA2 course (oops) and will attend the exam on re-exam date in July I guess. My class participating rate was quite low as usual because attending lectures isn't my strongest way of learning.

And one peculiarity! The exams are typically 60 minutes long and contain 60 points worth of questions. Use your time wisely and pay attention to point worthiness of a question. You don't have time to think, you should know immediately. If smoke is not coming out of your pen, you are slow! On the good side, the struggle is over very fast.

Tripping 3: Snowbording joyrney in Austria (private organiser, car rental, driving in Germany and Austria)

Once upon a time there were 2 Finnish guys, namely me and Ari-Matti, who noticed event advertisement in Facebook shared by AK-Erasmus. That event was a skiing trip to Alpines in Austria and organized by some individual organizer called Eventbrite. Original package was 300€ including bus transportation from Karlsruhe to Lachtal and excluding gear. 70€ additional charge for 3 day rent of jacket, trousers and snowboard. Helmet from the resort cost some 4€ a day.

Summing up: Ski-trip in Austrian Alps 300€ including transportation, accommodation and lift pass.  70€ for gear and some 12€ for helm.

Well, things didn't of course work out quite so smooth. The bus was cancelled and announced to us some 5 days before d-day. That's because people were gathered from all over the Germany and so few of us were coming from this region, 4 to be precise. Organizer gave us each others contact information so that we could come up with something. We decided to rent a car and drive there, at first we were ought to be the 4 of us and it was said that you won't anymore get the 100€ reservation fine back later than some 3 days before that d-day... But organizer indeed let one girl cancel it 2 days before and refunded her at least by her words, organizer denying it, pissing on our transportation costs as there would be 3 people sharing the car now.
  As there is anyway no use to cry after spilled milk, we went on with the plan. It was rather stressful since I paid the car before receiving any money from the 3rd participant or even meeting him, but he was from Finland also so generally a word to be trusted.

Renting the car: www.billiger-mietwagen.de is the one and only place. It's a sum up page of different car leasers providing a good search tool and best offers. What I reserved was a Opel Astra wagon type car or similar of size for 5 days, fully insured, winter tires (also tyre insurance), unlimited kilometers and even without own-risk payment share in case of accident. The price for whole deal was some 190€! Very cheap in my opinion, especially when I went to fetch the car and it turned out to be 2 year old BMW 320d, shiny baby with 185bhp. And I have lots of driving experience from older 330d m-sport. Positive turn of events happened for a change. Oh and practicalities: the leaser made additional 300€ charge as a collateral on my credit card, and in case of accident I should have had to pay up to some 1500€ damages which I could have received then from the leaser. Quite strange arrangement, but I guess it might be just so that they outsource the liquidity management that way, as they have to wait for a bit to get the money from their insurance company and if they meanwhile use customers money they don't have to have own cash reserved. After returning the car it took also quite long to receive the collateral back, over 1 week at least. The car company in question was "Buchbinder" and I can recommend it at least due to fancy cars.

 

The road trip to Lachtal took some 9 hours with couple of stops and accidental drive trough of Münich because I missed a turn. I was driving all the time by myself because 1) I like driving good cars 2) The car was on my name 3) Legally other drivers should be listed and some additional fee paid to the leaser. Majority of autobahns were partially closed due to some maintenance/rebuild and also because of too much traffic. On our way back during night time situation was far better and 180km/h cruise speed was standard for great parts. When speeding at autobahn, constant annoyance are those slow drivers coming to outer lane at about 140km/h speed to pass by someone at the middle lane, or when only 2 lanes are in use. It's quite typical to drive outer lane with your high beam on or flashing high beam from the distance to signal that you are coming, if you are driving especially fast (over 170km/h or so). It was very well possible to drive some 200km/h also but those winter tires made it rather uncomfortable by trembling a lot and felt to be bending a lot when cornering. Technical upper limit for the tires was  210km/h and indicated by a sticker on dashboard of the car.

   Unlike in Germany, a bingette (a sticker to the windshield) was required in Austria. A license for one week cost some 8€. Also one part on our way had additional 4,5€ one time toll. Highway speed in Austria's excellent roads felt really staggering after autobahn, but excitement came one smaller roads up to mountains. Speed limit was mostly 100km/h there and 70km/h for slower parts or villages (50 or 40 in exact center). 100km/h limit gave some sweet completely legal adrenaline boosted experience especially when roads went icy on our way back!

   One day we went to a nearby village to shop some groceries. Guys had their knuckles white and faces grayish when we were flying trough the corners as I started to gain the trust into the car's abilities. On our way back we hit blizzard right in the middle of a intensive competitive driving with some crazy Audi-man (I probably couldn't catch him even if I tried but I left some risk margin not to do anything too stupid, or shake the beers too much in the cargo bay). Some 5cm snow layer covered the road in less than 15 minutes! We had to turn back in the middle of very steep raising road because these traction tires didn't just produce enough grip to climb it! It was quite stressful to turn the car in the slope, when it was sliding backwards like a sledge while footing break pedal trough the floor, but it was succeeded without damages. The other route wasn't probably much better but by then I had realized that I must drive without drive control system and let tires just grind their way trough the new snow. It was some very slow mountain climbing drifting usually door side first but the control into that car is rather perfect so why not. Lastly we had to really back up and gain some speed to be able to make a tight turn into the parking lot of our resident area. 

Oh and important! At autobahn speed limit's can change drastically, and fast. And better to obey them fast because there are automated cameras in nasty spots like downhills etc... On our way back I got 2 speeding tickets. One after transfer from open limit to 120km/h and I recorded some 128km/h, and later when turning from 100km/h to 80km/h and I got again some 8km/h excess. Fine was 10€ in each case and bill came by mail in couple of weeks. 

About the ski resort: When we arrived things run rather smooth and we got our keys and the rented equipment from organizers. Accommodation was in 5 people one bedroom flat with bed-sofa, pair-bed and a 2 level bunk bed. The building was a rather modern wood cottage with 4 of such apartments. All the basic functions were supported like kitchen and shower and even small old TV, big dining table etc but nothing luxurious or even proper drying cabinet, which would have been highly appreciated. Main building had fine Finnish (!!!!) sauna, and a swimming pool, for additional 8€ fee/visit. Expensive but it was sacrifice to be made couple of times. Arrive was at Thursday evening and ski passes were distributed early next morning. By 10am we were at slopes but due to some excess wind speed, chair lifts were not operating. Whole Friday and Saturday only anchor lifts served us from 9am to some 4pm. 

Some wind and snow blizzard.

Some times the wind speed really was very high: once when I carried my board in hand, if I had dropped it it would have probably flown away instead of dropping to ground. Visibility was also so limited that once it was almost impossible to follow a narrow, 5m wide, route. That was on Saturday afternoon and the resort closed even anchor lifts early (3:45 perhaps). On Sunday weather turned to be favorable and chair lifts were operational opening quite many other possible routes as anchors covered only some 4 slopes. 

Overall: the mountain was not tall at all, highest spot perhaps 2800m and the downside of the slope at 2300m or something. There were not too many routes. Quite comparable resort to perhaps Ruka, only that Ruka has far better lift capacity. One side of the mountain was still closed whole time and no street/park was opened yet or even seen to be under construction. The extreme wind provided nice powder conditions in couple of slopes and there was also some limited off-route possibilities for more powder but nothing much. Snow wasn't yet deep at all because whole winter was quite snow poor at Alps (too). I cannot actually recommend Lachtal as a ski resort to anyone because at Alps there are so many far more better options.

People and night life: Happened so that there were majority of Finns because in addition to us 3, there was a group from Münich, some 5 guys. I cannot say that I'm too happy that it was so because not all had decent drinking habits. In addition to Finns there were at least 2 Indians who we shared our flat with, two English girls, a Chinese girl, some girl and a guy from Chile, American guy and others. Total group size was something like 20. Finnish guys had experience, and most of foreigners were beginners. Majority of the people hanged out in the slope as a big group but I was mainly going only with Artti, because I don't like the constant waiting inherent with big group. 

   People were drinking every evening till some 2am and I participated one of those evening and slept more or less the other 2. It was quite possible to catch sleep with ear plugs. There was a pub in the ski village, a walk away from our condo.

Sun finally broke out

Artti doing some powdering

Summary:
-Heck of a driving experience was the biggest positive element (for me, not so for my unfaithful co-passengers)
-Some powder snowboarding was new experience to me and it was really good practice before my thigh muscle started to hurt due a strain.
-The weather wasn't at all on our side and that's of course a big influencing possibility with this kind of plans.Time of the year was far too early considering snow conditions because they hadn't open park yet, freestyle being the thing for me.
-People were fine, although I'm not interested in multi-day drinking and would have therefore preferred more isolated sleeping chamber. Ski-trip is definitely highly associated with drinking and people do such trips even more for drinking than skiing purposes sometimes.
-EXPENSIVE! Car trip, accommodation, food (low budget self prepared from local Lidl), equipment rental totaled to over 450€. This to be compared to less than 250€ of  3day (as well) Erasmus ski-trip to alps which followed later.

Tripping 2: Spain, Andalucia

Finally some 2 months after actually making this trip, is time to share something about it here.

So on some evening last September I decided that I was in need of some vacation from this demanding and laborious effort.
-www.skyscanner.fi: a pretty practical cheap flight site. Baden-Baden airport is here in the region, about 40km away, reachable by the public traffic ticket we received from the city as a gift. Another options are Frankfurt am Main and Stuttgart airports which are in totally different league considering size. Germanwings flies from Stuttgart and Ryanair from Baden-Baden. There are probably other cheap fliers also of which I just haven't found out. I bought tickets from Baden-Baden to Malaga and back for 48€... but.

Flight took of on Sunday morning something past 8 a.m.. Last bus connection from Baden-Baden train station to airport was on Saturday evening 11'ish p.m. And earliest on Sunday too late. Last train connection to Baden-Baden direction arrived in Sinzheim Nord (a stop closer to the Airport) at around 1 a.m..

Starting point: Map shows that Airport indeed is some 8 kilometers into that direction, no road signs anywhere, nor road lights if somebody was expecting them. It was rather interesting experience to walk trough the farm side in darkness. Some 8 car's passed me during that ~1,5 h walk which would have given opportunities to hitchhike. I had only a back bag and was therefore perfectly fine with some walking, to stay warm and so.

Nest problem was so small size of the airport that it actually stays closed until some 5 a.m.. So after I arrived to the completely abandoned looking shabby airport, I had to improvise some shelter against coldness or stay up next couple of hours. There luckily is one hotel opposite of the terminal building which has open wind locker. It was rather small but the electrical doors anyway closed behind me and there I managed to try to sleep a little bit. I even found some polish guy who had shared same idea of overnight trip, only difference in that he had taken the last bus on Saturday. No employee of the hotel bothered us during the whole stay.

As the terminal opened, some half an hour sleep there on bench and another 1 hour in plane made miracles and I was in perfect condition to continue my morning adventure. Ryanair offered cozy 3-bench-row in a plane that felt very new. And then some people dare to complain about the company! :o

I had made all the hostel reservations in advance trough www.hostelbookers.com: First night in Malaga, 2 following nights in Granada, and again one night in Malaga. All I had to do was to figure out how to change cities but that wasn't much of a problem anyway. I had on 2 occasions actually difficulties to find the hostels because I had written addresses incompletely or wrong. Note: it's useful to actually use navigator beforehand to know where the place approximately should be.

Malaga is a lovely holiday resort with a nice medieval castle on very nice location atop a hill in the middle of the city, rose gardens, some Roman ruins and beach line boulevard. It's also houses Picasso museum and museum of music with one of the biggest collection of instruments in Europe, but I didn't have time to check those out. I spend most of my day walking in and about the castle and sitting at one cafe I actually got stuck into a conversation with one Korean guy. Nice new acquaintance. 

After one night in freezing hostel I went as a first thing on morning to buy a hoodie. I had woken up numerous times during night just because temperature sunk close to 0 degrees and blankets were summer style thin. With a new shirt I went to bus station to buy ticket to Granada, for some 14€.

Bus trip to Granada took some 2 hours trough a beautiful mountain landscape. My hostel, which I had to search again in one internet cafe was somewhat hidden in old Arab-quarters of historical center of the city. The old center is location for pretty impressive cathedral definitely worth visiting because of magnificent decorations and play of sun light, and the infamous castle Alhambra. Alhambra definitely is big and on such a site that it's easy to imagine having been quite a task to conquer.  

Infinite cobblestones @ Arab quarters

First task was to find the hostel, after walking some 5 kilometers from bus station, to drop my back bag and find some food. The Makuto Backpackers hostel proved to be very cozy hippie place with a tree-house and really relaxed people as volunteers, workers and customers. Facilities were good including leisure room, good shower, grill and fireplace, kitchen..  They gave free tour in the neighborhood to the couple major outlook spots (definitely worth a visit) and to see gypsy caves. These things were also marked in a map but the quarters are pretty tricky to navigate because lots of staircases and alleys and for the reason that roads are not build straight at all (also making it quite unique place to be). At the end of the tour we went for some beer and tapas in one of the numerous tapas places of the city. It's rather cost-efficient way to dine. 

Luckily enough one of these new friend showed to share same interests with me and we ended up spending big part of these Granada days together visiting Alhambra, walking around the old city-center (where I tried my first time chocolate con churros! Pure madness. Cup full of thick chocolate, like melt chocolate bar, accompanied with kind of donuts resembling bars of deep fried dough dripping of fat and loaded with sugar, sweet death), eating and drinking tea. 

Granada as seen from Alhambra

Alhambra, Sierra Nevadas snowy tops at background

Sierra Nevada, the mountain region south and south-east from Granada, got it's first snow coating some week before my stay in Granada took place. It was really stunning and intriguing view, and I really weighted the idea about going there to snowboard for one day, which would have been possible by taking a bus and renting gear on site, but I didn't find compelling information about rental prizes and was short on time anyway. Instead I left Granada early after spending 2 nights there by taking bus to Nerja, a small tourist oriented city at coast, rather directly to south. 

The bus trip in itself was again pretty beautiful

Nerja was stimulating experience consisting of totally empty and quiet beaches, stormy weather and fascinating mountain background. I did just walk around there for couple of hours before taking bus back to Malaga, but there was some kite surfing activity going on. 

A beach in Nerja

I was back to Malaga at early evening and was just chilling. I was still a bit confused after having met so great nice new people and having left them behind also almost in the same instant. New, valuable experience. I went out to eat with the Korean guy I had met before and sleep tight after this short but intense adventure. I will definitely go back into Spain again to travel properly, in backpacker style. 

Colourful canal garden in Nerja