A couple of weeks ago, I experienced my first Christmas market in Erfurt, Germany also known as Weihnachtsmarkt. In other regions such as south Germany, it’s called a Christkindlesmarkt. These markets supposedly originated in the middle ages. It’s a very beautiful sight scattered all around the city center. There are two epicenters. One is situated [...]

With one hour distance (with train) from Erfurt the city of Ilmenau is positioned between the Thuringian forest, which offers great occasions and moments for winter and summer sports, such as skiing, Nordic walking and mountain biking. Like many small cities it offers actually cheap life. As a student one can find small rooms in nice [...]

On the 16th of November 2011, a welcome reception was held for the new students of my department at the University of Erfurt, called the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy. It was a grand occasion and present were many distinguished guests. The location was the Erfurt City Hall—a very lovely setting indeed. The program [...]

There is a lovely, really beautiful city in the middle of Germany that I have wanted to write about for quite some time now but have not seem to make time to do so. It is a really beautiful city, a refreshing contrast to the busy and congested character that has come to be associated [...]

This blog entry is probably the ‘fondest’ I have had to write to date because it regards a trip I took at the end of September 2011 to meet the department at the DAAD handling my scholarship. Up until this point, I only knew the staff in this department via e-mail and snail-mail correspondence. The [...]

It has been quite a while since my last blog entry because the last couple of months has been a very busy but enlightening time of transitions for me. The content of this blog entry is an update of what I have been up to. As part of the requirement of the DAAD scholarship I [...]

I would be really surprised if there is any place in this world that sells in the last week of September more beer than Munich. 2011 has been a remarkable year for me in many ways and then a chance to visit the Oktoberfest is an icing on the Cake. I was there at this [...]

Hello dear friends. Long time you haven’t read any post from me due to my exams, but here I am back and excited to blog for the next upcoming semester too. It has been almost a year since I started studying at the Ilmenau University of Technology so I concluded to dedicate this post to [...]

My observation has been that most RISE students cannot speak much German even if they went on the 2-week language course before their internship. I am one of them. Although an interest in Germany was one of the reasons for my application for the RISE program, it came long after the opportunity to learn it [...]

The Goethe Universität Frankfurt or sometimes simply known as the Frankfurt University was founded in 1914 as a citizens university. In 1932, it was named after one of the most famous natives of Frankfurt – the poet and writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.  The university has about 38,000 students spread across 4 campuses. The Campus [...]