Two months in Germany

Версия на русском

After two months of living in Mannheim my life has become more or less stable and I even strarted to like it.

About the first week of these two months I've already written here, and now about what happened after. 

My German is already quite good for a person studying it for 4 months. I can explain what I need in the shop or to chat about some basic stuff. 

As I didn't manage to find temporary accommodation before arrival I continued my search already being here, in the city I didn't know at all. In total, I visited 4 appartments, this is briefly about my success:

• first time I had to ride a tram and then a stop by train to the city nearby and this was the day of my arrival in Germany,
• second time I missed my stop in train and waited for the next one for 20 minutes,
• third time I didn't manage to find how to reach the place and at my second attempt missed the stop by bus.

Dozens of sent and unanswered requests were making me depressed, 2 week long rent was going till the end and we came with this problem to International Office and Artem and I got rooms in dorms in the same flat (with 6 more people). There are pictures of my new home (before I put my stuff everywhere).

After getting an accommodation finally it's possible to focus on studying and social life! 
As for studying, it's extremely different from what we had on bachelor. Firstly, all me courses are in classes for 150-300 people. I've already written that we're 350+ in the same year and I thought it would be impossible to make friends with someone because you meet someone, then next time see in a month and have already forgot each other. But no, you meet new people all the time and see them quite often.

Also, a lot depends on how much time you spend on self-education. In GSOM you have a lot of homework but usually it's practise of theory you learn at lectures and you almost always know where to begin. And here we have to read coursebooks and, honestly speaking, I've lost my behavior of doing it and don't really like. All in all, selfdiscipline - all that we need. 

The third moment I don't really like is that there are not so many English-taught courses, and what is more, it's not always possible to get all that you want. Actually, the only course I had such problems with - case study for corporate finance, there was GMAT-based competition but in the last moment I was taken, Marketing and strategy courses, where a lot of attention is dedicated to practise, and therefore, number of seats is limited, distribution was random and many people didn't manage to take some courses they needed (but they finally solved it somehow). Actually, university and studying is the long story, so soon I'll tell you how my usual day here passes :)
As for spending free time, there are not that many options for it in Mannheim. These are some events of my life during last two months:

Two trips to Vincent's countryside (finally, we're able to see almost every weekend!)

Wurstmarkt festival, wine version of Oktoberfest, where people are drinking wine from pints. 

Trip to Heidelberg (the most beautiful of the cities nearby).

Halloween (I was a cracked doll)

In total, this note is a bit awkward as, on the one hand, nothing happens, and, on the other hand, living abroad is full of events every day. In the future I'll write more separately about Germany, university, culture, learning German and stuff. I hope, I'll overcome my laziness and posts would appear more often :)

It would be cool also to have a Q&A session about what you're most interested in about living in Germany, studying and so on. You can send them here or in comments, and I'll answer the most important in separate post :)