I chose as the topic of my seminar paper Thomas Mann’s short story “Little Mr. Friedmann”. It was also a great opportunity to know more about Thomas Mann’s biography and work, and also casted doubt upon the real role his Brazilian background played in his works. Then I decided to figure out my doubts and [...]

“Is that a bird? Is that a plane?……..no wait! It’s an Indian guy without a parachute!” This was how my Dutch room neighbour reacted to the prospect of me sky diving in Germany. But his menacing threats and taunting remarks did little to dampen my spirit as I began planning my adventure: A Tandem Sky [...]

This week I received the results for the TestDaF I had taken in April. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t reach the grade I needed in order to study at a Master’s course. The TestDaF basically certificates three different levels: TDN 3, 4 and 5; five being the highest. To study at the Master’s courses in which [...]

Guten Tag!  This past week has been quite eventful.  I feel as though I have settled into a pattern in the laboratory environment, and I am becoming more and more acclimated to the city of Leipzig. I wanted to use this blog entry to note my observations about food here in Germany, as it has [...]

I have to confess that I have been spending a lot of time learning German and the test-DaF preparation course has been quite intense for me.  There are really a lot of tasks I have to get used to and all the exercises have a certain timing to be finished, what is tricky. It feels [...]

In India, Mango is called the ‘King of all Fruits’ and trully so because some of the world’s best varieties of the fruit are grown here. The uniqueness about the mango fruit is that it is absolutely seasonal. Only in the summer months of April to June is when you can find the best mangos [...]

If there were two words that would describe my 2 weekends in and around Germany, they would be: ice and ICE. Well, the first one of course is the same as the solid form of water, but the second one and the more significant one is the InterCityExpress (ICE)! InterCity-Express is the system of high [...]

Last sunday was one of that days when everything was about food.  First, my tutor cooked Asparagus for lunch and invited me to join her, later with other friends, we inaugurated our brand-new Grill. First, I must say what’s exactly a Tutor. Well, a regular student at the university who helps us to get along [...]

As I said before, finding the pages of the courses that might interest me in the universities’ websites was an important step, since it helped me organize how I was going to prepare myself knowing what was necessary to be admitted at a Masters Course in Germany. One of these courses was the “Allgemeine und [...]

I have now been living in Leipzig since Sunday. I arrived at 10:40 am after going from Cincinnati, OH to Charlotte, NC (originally was supposed to go to Philadelphia, but the flight got rerouted) to Frankfurt, Germany to (at last) Leipzig.  Getting no sleep on the flights over wasn’t fun (still recovering from jet-lag), but [...]