View from Elbenalp (1644m)
Author: Ryan Rau | Majors: Computer Science and German
With my German intensive course finishing up and a two week break before the actual semester takes place it seemed like I had an early fall break. And with that time, I knew what I wanted to do, travel. With the weather getting colder I knew this would be the last opportunity, for some time, to go on a hiking adventure so that was the plan. That said, me and a fellow Arkansian set our site on hiking in the Swiss Alps.
We ultimately decided to hike Säntis, the highest mountain in the Alpstein massif of northeastern Switzerland. We planned for a three-day hike with two nights staying in cabins on the mountain. Our first day went exactly as planned as we hiked up to the first mountain cabin taking in all the mountain beauty. At the cabin, we had the fantastic opportunity of conversating with the workers along with some of the other guests all in German. It was great practice, and they were even nice enough to suggest better ways of saying phrases and other words to use to better get our points across.
Ascher Cliff Restuarant
After a wonderful first day, we started the second day full of excitement, but little did we know what we were in for. With the goal of reaching the peak, we had about 5 hours of hiking in front of us. It started off relatively calm but as we got closer to the peak both the weather and the intensity of the hike began to worsen. On the final section of the hike, it was almost a start vertical climb as snow and wind assaulted us. But in the end, we made it climbing to the peak of Säntis at 2,501 m above sea level.
Once at the peak, we decided it was probably best to not climb back down, and lucky for use there was a cable car that took us back down to the base of the mountain. So just like that we abandoned the remainder of our plans and ended up traveling to Zürich and staying the night on the outskirt of town. On the final day of our trip, we spent the day exploring Zürich visiting the National Museum, walking around the beautiful downtown shopping areas, and enjoying a bottle of Vivi Kola, the Swiss version of Coca Cola.
After returning to Darmstadt, we began preparing for the upcoming semester by selecting our courses. This was by far one of the biggest differences from what I’m used to at UARK. Rather than selecting your courses months in advance, TU Darmstadt allows you to attend courses without registering for them and you only technically need to register for them when you register to take the final. This was completely foreign to me, and I didn’t like the idea of registering for a course last minute before exams, so I treated it like I would back home.
Once registered for courses, I expected to be sent further information regarding the course and most importantly the zoom link for the courses not held in person. That was however not the case, and I spent the weekend before the first week of classes searching high and low for the necessary zoom links. Turns out, there existed an additional registration site where you could register for the course on their equivalent to blackboard without registering for the course in their equivalent to UAconnect. Ultimately, it was completely different than what I was used to and definitely created some unnecessary panic the weekend before classes started. So, for those studying abroad I would recommend emailing your potential professors before the weekend before class to make sure you get the needed information to start classes.
Confusion aside, I was ready to start the semester and with that the first week of classes started. In typical class fashion, the first week was rather straightforward. Mainly going over the syllabus including a brief introduction of what each class was ultimately going to offer. With the introductions aside I now look forward to the coming weeks of class where we’ll get more into the content.