At Schloss Neuschwanstein, overlooking the mountains.
Author: Jackson Burnett | Majors: Mechanical Engineering and German
I was excited to choose this program back in the fall of 2021 because I was originally told that the program would be in Holzkirchen, a small town in the south of Germany, near Munich. I was excited to sign up because I have some family from this area, in Bavaria, and I couldn’t wait for the opportunity to see them and be near many of them for the first time in my life. Unfortunately, with COVID, there were some changes, and the program was ultimately moved to Berlin. By this point I was already in pretty deep and didn’t have any other summer plans, and Berlin still sounded quite nice as well. So, even though it was not quite what I was expecting, I was still excited to go spend some time in Germany’s capital. The program is quite nice in that it offers a fair number of credit hours to be earned while abroad, I was able to take three courses, and earn 9 credit hours from KU that will all come back to help me earn my German degree at the U of A. But more importantly than that, it allowed me to have real conversations in German with real German people, which is the best practice you can ask for when learning a foreign language. Thanks to the program, I do feel like my German has improved dramatically from what it was before I left, and I’m very happy about that. The program allowed me the ability to speak with my family in German for the first time, which also meant getting closer to those who could not speak much English. The opportunity was also quite nice because for myself, in terms of professional goals, finding a career in Germany is certainly something I have my eyes open to, and so continuing to improve my German and make more contacts abroad is only helping to make that more possible.
The classes were alright, I took three German courses through KU, German Conversation, German Culture, and German Literary Masterpieces (GERM 333, 350, and 400, respectively). The classes were not much different than any class I’ve had at the U of A, and while they did certainly help my German learning, I learned a lot more from my encounters and conversations with real Germans.
Outside of the classroom I had several fun cultural experiences. We had a few free weekends during our stay in Berlin, which I used to explore some nearby cities, hiking areas, and even islands. The first weekend free, I travelled to the city of Prague in the Czech Republic. Of course, there was not any German here, but it is a remarkably fast train away from Berlin, so I had to take the opportunity to see the famous city. Since my time there was quite short, I was only able to do the traditional tourist things such as see the old fortresses, changing of the guards, and walk around the beautiful but incredibly hill streets.
My next free weekend, I travelled to Rügen, an island just north of Germany’s mainland. There, I spent the weekend hiking along the Königsstuhl trail, a beautiful oceanside hike with incredible views of the chalk cliffs, boats, and even swans. After my day hiking, I spent my day relaxing near my hostel, going swimming and doing some light kayaking on the Lietzow beach.
My third and final free weekend I travelled to Dresden, a city in Germany near the border of the Czech Republic. I spent that weekend travelling around Dresden’s old city town, most of which was destroyed during WW2 but rebuilt not long thereafter. I also travelled about an hour outside the city to the small villages of Rathen and Königstein. Rathen is the home of the famous Basteibrücke, a bridge that is built into large pillars of stone that is jutting out from the Earth. And Königstein, which has a well-known trail called Malerweg that takes you up a small mountain valley to get a beautiful overview of the city. At the end of the weekend, I also visited the Museum of Military History, which is located just a short walk outside Dresden’s main city center.
Advice
I would recommend this program to others as it allows a wonderful opportunity to get a short glimpse into life in Germany. Of course, this program will never really happen quite this way again because it is intended to be in Holzkirchen, not Berlin. But that only makes me want to recommend it even more because although we were only able to stay one day in Holzkirchen instead of the entire summer, the one day we spent in the town was quite lovely and all the people were incredibly friendly. Not only that, but Holzkirchen is only about a 40-minute train ride from Munich, where there are always things going on. The only thing I wish I had known before going was more German so that I could have gotten into the groove of things a bit faster, but apart from a decent understanding of German, there’s not much else you can do to prepare for this besides going in ready to have a good time and maybe knowing some cool cities that you would like to visit in your free time.