View of Marburg from Landgrafenschloss
Author: Ryan Rau | Majors: Computer Science and German
As I stood in line for German customs awaiting that passport stamp of validation, I thought to myself that this all had to be a dream. It had been over a year of delays and uncertainty due to COVID and another three years of preparation since committing to a degree plan with a year aboard. But as the customs officer stamped my passport and welcomed me to Germany it all really started to sink in. I was here, I made it.
Finally in Germany, it was now time for the fun part, figuring out how to live in Germany. With my German intensive course not starting for another week or so, I teamed up with the other Arkansians and spent time figuring out the small things. Starting from scratch, we were on the hunt for curtains, bedding, towels, and general house items. Seemed simple enough, but unfortunately Walmart doesn’t exist in Germany. Day by day, we started to find the proper stores and were finally able to mark items off our lists. By the end of the first week, we managed to find all that we needed, set our phones with German numbers, and even sign ourselves up for the meetings we would need to have to start our visa applications. It was a great sense of accomplishment and definitely a weight off all of our shoulders.
Now settled, my first class abroad was about to begin. As it was an intensive course, it was daily 4ish hour course. Ultimately, its structure wasn’t all that different than that from intersession courses back home. The only oddity I found was in the grading system which consisted of an all or nothing final and was on a scale of 1 through 6 with 1 being the best. A bit strange to me at first, but at the end of the day you either know the material or not so it wasn’t ultimately no different than other classes and I ended up finished off the course with a good mark. Content wise, the course was a great refresher of the German language and got the gears in my head once again turning.
As great of a refresher as the intensive course was, it needed some supplementary German exposer outside of class. For that, I tried my best to find other students to hang out with after class. A great resource for that was ESN (Erasmus Student Network), which hosted multiple meetups and events throughout the week providing great exposer to native German speakers along with other international students. From city tours to group dinners/lunches (Stammtisch) I’ve meet many international students along with further familiarizing myself with the Darmstadt area. ESN has been an invaluable resource and I would recommend any student studying abroad to find their university’s ESN group.
In addition to the ESN events, I’ve been trying to further acquaint myself with the area by taking advantage of the included access I have to the regional transit system. Being somewhere with a massively interconnected public transit system has been amazing and for anyone else study abroad I would recommend taking advantage of it! So far, I’ve visited Marburg, Frankfurt and Burg Frankenstein and have plans in the works to visit other places both in and outside of Germany.
With my first month going as well as it has, I look forward to the remaining time I have in Germany. Stay tuned for more!