GERMANY!
I have arrived in Konstanz! I flew from Athens into Zurich, Switzerland. This proved to be a bit more expensive than flying into one of the major German cities but has other advantages. An NAU student who had previously been in Konstanz recommended flying into Zurich, because it is only an hour away from Konstanz by Train. In fact, one can catch a train directly from the airport to the train-station in Konstanz. I have since learned, from other students here, that you can also take a bus and that it is much cheaper. The train was rather expensive, around $25, but the bus is only $10.
It was snowing when I arrived! That was quite surprising to me for some reason, but it is still winter here. It also snowed in Flagstaff over the past few days apparently, so maybe I just brought the weather here with me. The snow melted the next day, so unfortunately I did not get to see the city in snow (as my train arrived in the middle of the night). What has truly been a shock to my system is the fact the sun has not come out since I have been here. It has been about a week. I am not entirely unfamiliar with this phenomena, because I visit family every year in Ohio and the weather is much the same in the winter. But coming from Arizona, were we get something like 300 days of sunshine a year, it can be quite unsettling not to see the sun for a week straight.
On the bright side, the city is amazing! The old town is beautiful, and not to far from my dormitory. In fact, its only about a five to ten minute walk to the edge of the old city. I am fascinated by the entire downtown area. Most of the building date to the late medieval period, which is a special interest of mine.There's a cathedral, for example, which dates back as far as the 11th century. Some remnants of the old city wall also remain, as dozens of historic building crowed along narrow winding roads. Many of the building have dates on them, such as 1299 and and 1348. That may be a shock to non-history majors that come here, as there are buildings in this city that predate the discover of the Americas by hundreds of years. There's examples of many eras of architecture, from medieval to modern, withing the same city block. You will never see a building from the medieval period right next to a hyper modern shopping center in the US!
I did face one challenge upon arrival to the city, which was that I could not move into my apartment as soon as I arrived. Having arrived on a Friday night, and the company that runs the housing for the university only allows move-ins on weekdays. This meant that I had to stay in a hostel last weekend for three nights. A $100 I will not get back. For anyone that comes after me, I would advise arriving on a weekday, preferably monday-thursday, to minimize money spent on hotel stays. The company that does the housing is called SeeZeit, and one has to email them before you can move in. They also do not give you any way to contact your roommates before you move in, so that's an annoyance. One just shows up and say “hey, I live here now.” But my roommates seem nice, well the one I have meet. I will eventually have two more. The university is actually between sessions at the moment, so there is only a fraction of the regular student population that normally resides in the city. Since I am in the GO Konstanz program, I arrived a month and a half before the semester started. My roommate is from Turkey, so that is very interesting from a cultural standpoint. I am already meeting people from around the world!
The apartment itself is adequate, but nothing special. It consists of four private rooms, connected to a kitchen. The bathroom is split into two separate rooms. One has the shower and the other has the toilet. This is actually quite nice, because you can still go to the bathroom if your roommate takes long showers. What is not nice is that there isn’t really any common space. There is only the kitchen, which is not exactly set up for socializing. I would like to have a living room to socialize with with my roommates or with others. As a result of this, I have not seen my roommate that much. My apartment,at least quite well placed. I am about a half an hour from the campus by bus, and about 20 minutes from the downtown. This is ideal in terms of my being halfway between school and everything else. Most of the shopping and nightlife is downtown, which makes my place a good central location.
Definitely glad I brought my winter coat and water proof boots. This last week it has remained cold and has rain like twice. So even though it is the “summer semester” anyone on the Konstanz exchange, or at least who are doing the GO Konstanz program need to bring cold weather gear. I presume one should bring warm weather stuff as well, because apparently the sun will eventually return to the earth.
View out the window of my flight from Athens to Zurich