University of Applied Sciences Landshut

Our home university, the University of Applied Sciences Landshut, is a very beautiful campus located a little bit outside from the city center. The campus has two big buildings with all the classrooms and professors' offices and one of them has a kiosk, where you can buy some food and drinks. Then there is another smaller building with the students canteen, a nice cafe and the library. By the way, the library is open 24 hours :-))) so you have access to books whenever you are in the mood ;-)
In the university's yard there is a small river, which is the most popular place during summertime - you can enjoy the sun while cooling your feet :-) And if you are lucky, you may also find a free place at one of the red seats.
Behind the university there is a big sports field. Every year the students organization of UNICEF organizes a charity run there combined with a sports events where both - students and professors - are taking part and playing against each other. For those who don't want to be sportingly active, there is also some music, beer, bratwurst and fun watching the matches :-)

So, now to studying at the UAS Landshut. It is totally different compared to the system of Novia. First of all, the duration of the semesters. The winter semester starts in the beginning of October and lasts until the end of January or beginning of February, depends on the dates of the exams. In between there is a Christmas break of two weeks. The summer semester lasts from mid of March until mid or end of July, also depending on the exam dates. Before every semester, you can check the lectures timetable online. This schedule shows you how your university week will look like and normally it does not really change. All courses mentioned in this schedule last the whole semester and at the end of it you have a final written exam. There are some exceptions, where you don't have to write an exam, instead you might be supposed to prepare a presentation and/or write a report.

Besides this, in the regular courses there is no compulsory attendance, only in the lectures done by the language center or other expectations. Just so you know :-) But still, I really recommend you to go to the lectures, as it is very helpful to work through the different topics during class and listen to what the professor talks about. Furthermore, you will get some relevant information, which is not mentioned in the script or any book, but still relevant for the exam. It will also save time when preparing for the exams as you have already heard about the different topics during the lectures :-) And as I have already mentioned the scripts, normally all professors support their lectures with scripts, which you can download from moodle. All these things together creates the basis for preparing for the exams. You don't have to have any team meetings or projects for courses. Maybe you have to prepare some homework for some courses, but normally not :-)

During the breaks or lunchtime you can get food in one of the canteens, which are called "Mensa" in Germany :-) The prices are around 2,60€ for main dishes. You also have the possibility to go to the canteen of the agricultural school, which is located next to the university. The food there is really delicious and also very cheap.

As I have already mentioned, the university is located a little bit outside from the city center, but you can still get to the centre really easy by bus (around 10minutes) or bike (around 20-30minutes). When you live in the student housing you are very lucky, as they are directly on the opposite site of the university. So you can just get up 15minutes before the lecture starts and walk across the street :-)))

Also really favorable is the fact that there is "Gretlmühle" nearby the university. This is a little lake where you can swim, barbecue on the greenfield side or play volleyball. A small kiosk provides food and drinks as well, so there is nearly nothing you could miss there :-)

I hope I could give you the information you were looking for! Look forward to go to Landshut - you will have an amazing time there :-)

See you!

Kathi

Project - Amazing Pargas

On November 15^th 2014 our communication class got to 
organize a fair in a small town called Pargas (Finnish: Parainen). The town is about 20 kilometers from Turku and the only town in Finland that is completely surrounded by water on all sides. The population of Pargas is about 15.517 (Jan. 2014 – Wikipedia), which totally shows that it’s a rather small and cozy town.

Our class was charged with organizing this event to help promote local companies as well as to enliven the little town of Pargas. The fair was focused around health and family related topics! The planning process started way back in September when we formed groups who would be responsible for certain fields.

This Saturday we had to show the results of our hard work. Due to the fact that it was a Swedish/Finnish-speaking project, us - as exchange students didn’t have the chance to participate a lot regarding the communication of the fair. But still our Finnish fellow students tried to keep us informed and allocate possible tasks so we were pretty integrated and excited how it would turn out!

The different project groups had organized exhibitors regarding their topic, for instance some of the topics were beauty and fitness, travelling, family, music, associations etc. All the exhibitors were local, rather small companies who had the opportunity to sell their products but also to advertise their companies to the local people.

The fair started at 10am with an opening ceremony. After this people had the chance to take a walk through the hall and check out the exhibitors. Meanwhile there were some speakers who talked about health stuffs. At 12pm one of our project groups had organized a band called Satin Circus. You can check them out here! They played a couple of songs and all of a sudden, the hall was filled! :)

While the main fair was happening in the gym of a school, one project group had organized an ice skating training in a nearby ice skating location. There was also a bowling cup happening in a local bowling center. The basic aim of the fair was to revive the town and show the local people (especially families) opportunities to spend their spare-time!

After lunch break several music and dance groups from the local music school performed and after that there were again some speakers talking about their travelling experiences and health related stuff! Unfortunately all of this was either in Swedish or Finnish so I couldn’t really understand anything. :/

Some students had organized a café where they sold sandwiches, coffee and cake. There was also an activity room for kids. They could do bonding activities with their parents like walk blindfolded through an obstacle path.

The last act of the day was the band performing! It was a pretty small concert and the main audience was teenaged girls ;)

I have to say their music is quite OneDirection-like and definitely directed to young teenagers, but I liked their choice of instruments, they included a saxophone and a contrabass :) 

After that it took us 1 hour to tidy up. Eventually it was a fun day! My feet hurt and I was quite tired!!

This was the first time for me to organize an event like this. I got some interesting insights into the planning process and the interpersonal struggles that occur when organizing a project like this. I would have expected more visitors there but it seemed like the organizers were happy with the number of people who showed up. In the end I think that all of us took a lot out of this project!

See you soon again!

Raisa

Novia University of Applied Sciences

The Novia University of Applied Sciences, where we are currently studying, is located  at the Aurajoka river and only 5minutes walking distance to the city center. This makes every break between courses or lunch time very enjoyable :-) 

You can relax in the sun at the river or just walk to the "Kauppatori" and by something to eat :-)

You also have the possibility to visit the Café Novia, which is directly in the inner yard of the University. This Café is run by Novia students and they offer great food, coffee etc. - nearly everything you might be looking for for your break :-) Although they sell the products at higher prices, it is really worth it.

Nevertheless, you can also go to one of the students' canteens called "Kåren", which is on the opposite side on the University. The food there differs every day and costs around 2,60€ including main dish, salad, 2 drinks and bread. 

In order to stay or get in shape, Novia has a nice fitness room only for the students there, which you can use for free. The equipment there will not help you to become a bodybuilder, but there in my opinion there is enough stuff for a good workout :-)




But of course, studying at the Novia is not about eating or doing sports :-)
The Novia UAS is one of 4 higher educational institutions in Turku and a Swedish speaking University. The language of education is Swedish and English and most courses are held in Swedish. Nevertheless, exchange students attend English lectures with local, Finnish students. As at the Novia UAS the study style is totally different than for example at UASs in Germany, France, Spain or even here in Finland, it might be good to know how everything is handled here. First of all, you do not have professors, instead you are supervised by coaches. Then the lectures here are not given in the traditional teacher-centered way where you are sitting in a classroom and just listen to the professor. Most of the time you are working in groups and preparing projects or dealing with tasks. And there is no regular schedule. Instead you have to organize your team meetings by your own and take care that everything is done on time. The concept, called "Team Novia", focuses on team work and project-based learning combined with reading appropriate literature. The degree students here establish their own companies as teams in the beginning of their studies at Novia and they run this company until their graduation.This whole learning approach has the aim to teach the students how to handle long-term projects responsibly and team work. Of course the students do not have to run the company totally on their own. They are guided by their coaches with training sessions, workshops and courses. Those coaches have each their own team, which they supervise from the start of studies until the graduation. 

During training sessions the students have to possibility to talk about everything that is currently going on within the course and their company. Every session is lead by one or two students who prepare and moderate it. It usually takes place in one of the typical Novia rooms with sofas or IKEA arm chairs and the students are sitting in a big circle. The tourism students also have their own "offices", where they can hold up meetings and discuss different issues.

I am currently attending the course "Sustainable Development". We had to choose a town in Finland and take a look at the town's plans of how it would like to develop until 2050. I am part of the group, which has chosen Tampere and firstly we started with the creation of a project plan in order to organize our tasks, aims and due dates. As we knew from the beginning on that we have to prepare a presentation until the mid of April, we were able to plan the whole project subsequently. Novia is always looking for students doing a theoretical and an empirical part within projects and so we took the chance to travel to Tampere and speak to some respondents regarding the plans for "Tampere in 2050". For me, this was a perfect opportunity - I did not only get to know new finish students and employees of the city Tampere, I also had the chance to see Tampere and get an exclusive guided tour through the city from locals :-)
Now we have to work with the information we got from our interviews, prepare a presentation about "Tampere in 2050" and write a group report in which we discuss what we have learned and what went well and what went bad within the project. Next to this group part we have to write an individual so called "Key learning note". Here we combine knowledge from the literature with the course experiences we have made. This document describes the students learning progress and the knowledge the student has gained through literature study, the active team work and the training sessions. In order to guarantee that every student is working actively in the course we have to write down every hour we work for the project including the date and what we worked on. 
This might seem a lot of paper work, but you should not forget that there is no final written exam at the end of the course. This is the same in all the other courses, except Financing and Investment. You surely will not get bored as you always have to do something for the different courses, but still it is fun! At least more fun than writing exams :-) You have the chance to become part of the course as you work together with different people and you participate more actively in the lectures than you might be used to from at home. I really like it as there is not the pressure I was used to from my home university regarding tests and exams. Also the fact that there are usually no "lectures" you can arrange your team meetings individually whenever you have time for it. You just have to get everything done on time, but this is no problem at all.
I hope you now have an idea how the study life at Novia University in Turku is and to receive some more information about the projects here stay tuned and check out next week's post :-)
If you are interested in their learning concept, check out Team Novias webpage!



See you soon and enjoy everything!

Katharina

How to get around (Part 1) - Public Transportation System in Germany

This blog post will be concerned about the public transportation system in Germany. The Finnish system differs a lot from the German one. This is of course due to the small population of Finland and also due to the great distance of the cities. So far I have mostly used the Finnish Onnibus to get around, which is really convenient and cheap! Actually if you book on time, it is even cheaper than German public transportation.

However Germany offers plenty of options to get from A to B.  We have created a list of transportation options to get around. Though we recommend to always ask around if someone can give you a ride on their train ticket or car etc.

For students the cheapest and most convenient way of getting around is by train. The “Deutsche Bahn” offers plenty of specific offers. Most of the times those offers are way cheaper than a regular ticket, so it is totally worth travelling in a group or collecting a group of people to go to a certain destination.

The regional day ticket allows you to travel on regional trains within one German state of your choice with unlimited freedom on all regional trains and the complete public transport system for one day. In Bavaria, the “Bayern-Ticket” comes in handy, as it allows up to 5 people to travel in between the boarders of the Bavarian state with every regional train (Regional Express) and most of the local public transport system. Of course you should always check with the bus/tram driver if you ticket is valid in the vehicle! In general, you can use the ticket in all local trains (called Interregio-Express, Regional-Express, Regionalbahn, S-Bahn)
Besides there are also regional tickets for travelling at night time. If you are planning to visit Munich for an evening event, you might want to think about saving a couple of Euros by using this ticket!
It is also recommended to buy the tickets at the ticket machine or online, as you will pay an additional fee at the DB Service Center! The Bayern Ticket can be used during weekdays between 9 am and 3 am (of the following day). On weekends is valid from 0.00 to 3 am of the following day.
Other than the regional tickets, the “Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket” will enable you to travel all across Germany during weekends, starting at 40€. With this ticket, could basically travel from the very south to the north of Germany. Of course the catch is, that you can only take regional trains, which means that your journey will take longer and you need to exchange trains.
Please check out Deutsche Bahn’sEnglish Website for more information on the regional tickets! 

Flixbus is another cheap way of getting around in between big cities. This bus service is similar to the Finnish Onnibus and very popular due to their cheap prices. Passengers are provided free WiFi, a reserved seat as well as the possibility to take along up to two pieces of luggage. You can also take your bike or other large items if you pay a small extra fee.

The busses depart from every bigger city in Germany like Aachen, Frankfurt, Garmisch, Karlsruhe, Munich, Nürnberg, Stuttgart or Würzburg. Most of the intercity bus services are provided about 3 times per day, depending on the size of the cities and the demand.

Flixbus also takes you to destinations outside of Germany. The transportation system is available to almost every capital city in the neighbor countries of Germany.  

If you chose these for your trip, you should book your ticket on time and also arrive at the bus stop on time!! However other than with Onnibus, you can only book your tickets about six weeks in advance.

When traveling from Landshut, you have to keep in mind, that Landshut is not included in their routes. The next departure is Munich or Regensburg!

Check out the English Flixbus webpage for more information and booking options!

In Landshut the public transportation system will be free of charge for you as long as you carry your student card with you. Bus number 3 takes you from the University to the city center “Altstadt” and even to the train station. 
The local bus operator in Landshut also provides a so called "Airport Line", which brings you to the airport in about 30 minutes. Students pay about 8€ for one-way. 

Unfortunately the bus company doesn't provide an English website. If you want to practice your German you can take a look at Stadtwerke Landshut's German webpage, which gives information about their network of routes as well as on the time tables 

However as Landshut is a small city, it is always easy to get around by bike! Especially in spring and summer, you will enjoy riding your bike along the river Isar. 

If you are planning trips to Munich or the surroundings, you should always check if local students can give you a ride for a small amount of money. Facebook-Groups, such as Campus Landshut Fahrgemeinschaften or Mitfahrgelegenheit LA-MUC should also help you to get to Munich.

I hope that you got a broad understanding of the German public transportation system! If you have any questions, annotations or if you spot any mistakes, feel free to leave us a comment! :)

Raisa :)