Social scene in Konstanz

Konstanz is great! I have been making friends from all over the world. I do hang out with a couple of Americans, but also with Canadians, Australians, Scandinavians, Turks and others. The international community here is fantastic, and actually quite large. According the to University, there are around 1,500 international and exchange students at Konstanz, which is quite a lot considering the Uni only has about 10,000 students. This means that you hear a lot of English around the campus, which can make it a bit hard to practice your German, but it does mean that almost everyone speaks English. This makes it much easier to interact with people and make friends if your German iskills are lacking.

The university, and associated organisations, like LEI Konstanz, organised events throughout the GO Konstanz period. So far, i have been on two excursions through the school and a bar crawl. These have proven to be great opportunities to meet people in a non academic setting, which is quite nice. I would highly recommend these to students that are doing the GO Konstanz program. The first excursion we went on was to the town of Freiburg, about two hours away by bus. The university chartered two separate buses for this event! They took us through the old city, giving separate tours in English and German, depending on your GO Konstanz group. It was a fun time and I meet several students I had never meet before. O also grew closer to those that I had already befriended. The second excursion was to a town just across the lake, called Mersburg. This trip was much shorter, but still fascinating. I rode the ferry across the lake for the first time, and had the opportunity to see my first castle. The bar crawl was one of the most enjoyable events so far. It is organised LEI Konstanz just for the international students. The bar crawl also introduced me to the German beer culture, which is famous around the world and is truly crucial to understand to understand the way Germans socialize.

A view from Mersburg castle bridge loking out at the town

The nightlife of Konatanz is quite vibrant. There always seem to be events or live music to be found somewhere in the city. One has little trouble finding entertainment around here on the weekends, or even during the week. There are many restaurants and pubs in the historic downtown, which GO Konstanz students frequent. Some of the more popular destinations are a Irish pub/ restaurant called Shamrocks and a quaint pub called Heimat. If one is a late night person, many of the downtown social spots are open quite late, and their are also several nightclubs through the city. Most of these are open until 5AM every day of the week. Getting out and enjoying the night life is a great way to meet Germans, as it is normally quite difficult to befriend them. They are not unfriendly, just more reserved and tend to stick to the people they know more than Americans do. In Flagstaff, I am usually not one to stay out late into the night, but in Konstanz I find myself doing this much more frequently.