ERASMUS report
Bonn 2013-2014
Bogdan Alecu
How I ended up deciding to study abroad for a year
Some people just know, when they go to uni, that they'll want to do a year abroad. Others
even choose their university based on the studying abroad opportunities. For me, this wasn't quite
the case. By the end of year one, I had no idea I would end up going to Germany. The ERASMUS
programme was just a vague, distant concept. At some point in year 2, we all got e-mails telling us
about how we could choose to do a year abroad. This did raise my interest, but not exactly in an
“OH MY GOD I WANT TO DO THIS” sort of way. One of the first thoughts that came to me was
“that's a chance for me to improve my German!”, but it was soon followed by something along the
lines of “don't be silly, a year abroad is a scary and complicated idea” (I'm not exactly an
adventurous person). However, the university organised a bunch of events for those interested, and I
had nothing to lose by going to those, so I did just that. Thankfully, we didn't need to decide straight
away whether we wanted to go abroad. If this hadn't been the case, I would have probably not
applied. It took some time and talking to people before I realised going abroad was both a good and
an achievable prospect.
I knew for a fact that I wouldn't want to do a year that counted for credit in a language that I
wasn't comfortable with. There was the option of making the year not count (which I ended up
taking), but I was worried that I would end up not knowing anyone in my last year at Warwick. This
changed when I found out one of my friends also wanted to do the 5 year MMath course with study
in Europe (he went to Munich). This made the choice a lot easier. I decided Bonn would be my
ideal destination, after someone at one of the meetings described it as “the place to go if you want to
study in Germany”, so I applied (this sounds scarier than it is; the selection process takes place
within Warwick, and I don't think there were that many applicants in my year). I was accepted. And
suddenly, it was happening! I was going to Bonn.
Before the arrival
Before I start describing my experience, I believe a couple of disclaimers are in order. First
of all, I think the reader should be aware that I was already “studying abroad” before I went to
Germany (I only moved to the UK for university). Thus my experience may well be biased. I don't
think that is the case, for one simple reason : my English is far better than my German, so when I
went to Warwick, adapting to my new life was a lot easier than it was when I went to Bonn. I just
thought it was worth mentioning. And also, I like the word “biased”. Second, I feel like I should
restate the fairly obvious fact that one's experience with ERASMUS will vary a lot not only with
each individual, but also with the city one chooses to go to. What I write here only applies to Bonn,
so one shouldn't assume that, for example, other universities provide the same orientation
programme (although I would believe they all have some sort of orientation).
After the year at Warwick ended, I didn't really know where to start with the preparations.
Luckily, the International Office of Bonn University anticipated my fear and confusion and
contacted me via e-mail. They put me in touch with the Studentenwerk Bonn (an entity that deals
with student-related stuff, like providing accommodation and reasonably priced food), which then
offered me a chance to apply for lodging in a Studentenwohnheim (basically halls that are spread
around Bonn), which I did. The prices varied depending on the halls (which unfortunately we didn't
get to choose), ranging from about 180 to 250 euros per month. Another option (that in retrospect
might have been better, but that I didn't consider at the time) would have been to try and find a
Wohngemeinschaft (basically living in a flat with a few other potentially German students). While it
may sound more difficult, I know some people who did it and for whom it worked really well.
Amongst other things, it will guarantee that you get to live with German students (foreign students
were often placed together in the halls).
We were also informed of the existence of the “Bonn buddy” system, which despite the
rather unnecessary alliteration was a great thing : incoming students would be put in contact with a
German student (the eponymous “Bonn buddy”), who would be their guide and hopefully friend in
Bonn. I do know some people whose buddy sadly never showed up. I was lucky enough to be
assigned to exemplary buddy, who had done this for several years and was enjoying it. He would
become one of the people with whom I would speak (or, at first, attempt to speak) exclusively in
German.
The International Office also provided a one-month orientation programme with an intensive
language course for all levels, which costed around 500 euros. I took it, and that turned out to be a
great choice, since that's where I met most of the people who would become my best friends in
Germany. I am now going to talk about this month in more detail, since as one might expect, it had
a big impact on the year to come. Seeing how a huge number of things happened during a short
timespan, it is impossible to accurately convey the experience, I will nevertheless try my best.
My first impressions
I was offered a room in halls, in an area called Tannenbusch. Whenever I mentioned that to
German students (including my buddy, with whom I met up the day after my arrival), they seemed
to give me an “oh my God I'm so sorry” face. Let's say that didn't really inspire confidence. But the
place was not that bad. The area wasn't great, but it wasn't worse than some parts of Coventry. And
the halls were pretty close to the underground station (the centre of Bonn was about one hour by
foot away, or 7 minutes by underground). I think a good way to summarise it is, I wouldn't walk
there at night for pleasure, but nothing bad happened to me during my stay. I did hear there was
once a pretty serious altercation between the locals and some international students living in my
halls, but I was led to believe it was more of an escalating situation than an unprovoked attack, and
some alcohol was involved. A lot of Bonn is just as safe as the Warwick campus though, including
the area around the maths department.
I was also unfortunate enough to not have my laptop with me during the first week. Now
you might think that living a week without your laptop isn't that difficult. I would have also thought
that. But combine it with not knowing anyone and not having a German phone number, and you get
what was pretty much my worst week in Bonn. That was the only time when I had serious second
thoughts about my decision to go abroad. Thankfully, I managed to make it past that, and things
quickly got better.
It is easy to forget that everyone is pretty much in the same position as you are when they
first get to Germany. There are occasionally people who seem to know what they're doing, like they
were specifically born for doing years abroad, but most people were just as clueless as I was when I
got there. And most of us shared something in common : we all wanted, for one reason or another,
to go to Bonn for a year (or some other period of time; I've met people from the States who were
there for around 4 months, which is a bit weird seeing how most courses span over at least one
semester. But who am I to judge?). That made everything seem a lot less intimidating. As someone
who isn't particularly good at meeting new people, I was surprised by how easy it was to talk to
other exchange students. The International Office organised plenty of events and activities, and
everyone was in an “I've got to talk to people and make new friends” mood. Sure, a lot of those
conversations lead nowhere, but some of them allowed me to meet the people I would spend most
of the year with. For a 250 euros (per semester) fee, we were also issued with student IDs, which, as
well as providing other advantages, allowed us to travel for free in the Nordrhein-Westfallen region.
Soon after the first week-end, we were placed in groups for the German course based on our
level (we took a placement test for that). I was put in the advanced C1 group. I suppose all those
Rammstein songs I had memorised finally paid out. On a more serious note, I was genuinely
surprised; I had done German in high school at a B1-B2 level, but hadn't properly practised it since,
so I didn't think I was capable of having any conversation past “nice weather”. Clearly I was
mistaken. This goes to show, if you're planning to do a year in Germany, but you don't feel like you
know enough German, you're very, very wrong. Okay, I might be generalising a bit too much. But
honestly, unless your course specifically requires knowledge of German, you're safe going to Bonn
if you know how to introduce yourself, ask for food and comment on the weather. Your German
will improve a lot.
Running around
As you can imagine, there is an administrative side to moving to another country. In my
case, it involved a lot of queuing, trying to talk to people in German (although most people will
speak English), and running around. If this seems tedious, scary, stressful and/or horrible, let me
assure you it was all of those things. No, I didn't mean none. Unless you happen to be one of those
people who love filling in forms and queueing for half an hour only to be told you needed another
document before you could get the one you were waiting for (what do you mean, those people don't
exist?), you will not enjoy this part. But I don't think it's worth not taking a year abroad just to avoid
it. Plus it doesn't take longer than a month until everything is in order (the really bad bit only lasted
a week or so). In case anyone's worried, it's pretty difficult to mess up to the point where they'd
have to send you back. The International office gave us a list of things we NEEDED to do (like
register with the city hall, open a bank account, sign the contract for the room etc.), but there were
other things that would not come to mind straight away (like getting a German phone number,
registering with the TV company). For anyone going abroad, I recommend taking a day to ask
around and make a list of all of the things that you might need to do.
A second, shorter round of running around came at the end of the orientation period, when
the courses were about to begin. I set up a meeting with the ERASMUS coordinator for the maths
department. He's the one who signed my monitoring form every month. He's a very nice guy, and
has a dog in his office. While this is not very important in itself, it was a source of shock for me,
because I only noticed the dog during one of my last monitoring points, but was told that it had been
there, silently, all along. It is a very well behaved dog. But I'm diverging. I got the learning
agreement signed, then the coordinator briefly told me what I should do, and as it turns out, the
registration process for modules is slightly different from the one at Warwick. When wanting to take
a module, one has to register for one of the exercise classes. Although attendance is not compulsory,
one has to hand in work and get over 50% of the marks in order to be allowed to take the exam, for
which one must register during the exam registration period. One then has two tries to pass an
exam. The second paper is usually harder than the first one. For German students, the exam
registration (and sometimes the registration for exercise classes) is done online through a system
similar to the Warwick module registration. However, this doesn't work for international students (it
actually did work, but only partially, which was a bit confusing, but I'm not going to go into detail),
so one might need to e-mail the lecturer / person responsible for the exercise classes in order to
register for those, and the Bachelor – Master office for exams.
Maths in Bonn
I can say straight away that I am glad the year didn't count for credit. I was unable to take
most third year modules from Bonn due to the discrepancies in the material covered. I settled
instead for 5 second year modules, and 1 third year one (each module is worth 9 ECTS, or 18 CAT).
I did a lot better in my second semester than in my first, probably because I knew what to expect. At
Warwick, the modules are relatively small, so one has a lot of flexibility when choosing them. At
Bonn, one can only choose a few modules, but those cover their topics in more depth. For
comparison, their “Analysis 3” (which, for perspective, is done after 18 ECTS of analysis, i.e. the
equivalent of Analysis 1, 2 and 3 at Warwick) covers measure theory, a bit of functional analysis
and a bit of vector analysis. I also found the exercises and exams more difficult.
The five 2nd year modules I took were taught in German. This was actually not a problem.
The only one where I had a bit of trouble was “Introduction to Discrete Mathematics”, but that was
just because I didn't know the graph theoretical terms. In most other lectures, the terms for almost
all concepts were very similar to the English ones, and the common expressions (like “Beweis” for
“proof”) were quite easy to get used to.
Talking to other maths students proved to be more difficult than I had expected, but I did
meet some people through work groups (for most modules, we were supposed to hand in the work
in groups of 2 or 3 people). I got to know what would become one of my best German friends by
being placed in a group with him.
How going abroad changed my perspective
I've had some of the best times of my life during my year abroad, but I've also had my fair
share of bad times. I've made great friends, but I've also lost some. But I don't regret going to
Germany in any way. Aside for greatly helping me improve my German, it has provided me with
unique experiences that I couldn't get in any other way. I now feel a lot more autonomous, and my
view on many things has changed. I used to think every problem had a perfect solution, and that
things were in a way black or white. I now realise life is a lot more fuzzy, that it has an
“improvising as you go along” side to it, and I feel like I now have the courage to seize
opportunities I wouldn't have even noticed a year ago. I have become more adventurous, for lack of
a better word.
If you're considering going abroad, keep in mind you may have a very different experience
from mine. It may or may not go well. I think it's important you don't have any preconceptions. If
you think it's going to be a perfect experience, you will in all likelihood be disappointed. On the
other hand, if you want to do it but you're worried you would find it horrible and not enjoy it, you
might choose not to go and miss out on the time of your life. There's no way of knowing exactly
how it's going to pan out, but as long as you keep an open mind, you will probably find the
experience beneficial at least in some ways. Seeing how studying abroad for a year is a unique, lifechanging opportunity, I personally think it's a risk worth taking.
Feel free to contact me if you're thinking of going to Bonn and have any questions I might
have the answers to!