19 exchange students from TKU’s Department of German, who are currently staying at Bonn University and University of Cologne in Germany and University of Vienna in Austria sent their reports via e-mail on their lives there. “Slower, regular pace of living” is what most exchange students think what best distinguishes German from Taiwan. “Upon arriving, I had difficulty getting adjusted to the life here, which I found not so interesting as the life in Taipei,” Tien Wei-lian at Bonn University said. “Without convenience stores around the street corners, students coming here found life here terribly inconvenient. As days gone by, we gradually felt like fully-matured adults, and we started to plan our life and spending.” Some found out that Germans enjoy eating potatoes a lot. “More than one hundred potato recipes are available in bookstores. Potato is one major dish in German’s dining table; flour is present in almost every kind of food. No wonder everybody gets fat here,” Chang Shi-yang commented.

In addition to regular attendance in classes, life in Germany includes “international” dinner parties and, most excitingly, touring everywhere. Lee Jing-yi said, “A whole new world is opened up to me: I went to the beer festival in Munich and the carnival in Cologne.” Lee’s favorite city is German’s capital, Berlin, with her rich historic sites like Brandenburg. Berlin is also a paradise of shopping; the price of Trippen shoes there is less than half price that in Taiwan.

As for the courses, Yang Chien-mei thought that the greatest gain is the weekly extracurricular activities. “The extracurricular activity in the first week is a tiresome burden to me. Germans spoke in speeding way. Though I asked them to speak more lowly, I still had difficulty understanding what they said. But after that, all the activities were fun, and I felt much contented every week.” (~ Han-yu Huang )

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