Bill, 2003:
When I first arrived in Berlin, it was a little unnerving because my housing situation was so unsure. Before I had left for Germany I had been looking on the internet a lot for rooms. Also, the magazine Zitty has listings online as well. When i got here, luckily things worked out with leonie fairly quickly so it saved me a lot of hunting! But I would definitely recommend that students live in a WG-Zimmer instead of the dorm. Everybody I know lives in a WG now. A few people lived in the dorm last semester but they say it's relatively far away and not too nice (although it is cheaper!). But i think living in an apartment (especially with Germans) is an important part of the experience.
I loved Berlin right away... it's a huge city but it's very easy to get around with public transportation. Once the semester starts students must pay a fee (a little less than 150 euros, I think) and that gets them a 'semester ticket' which is valid for all forms of public transportation in Berlin (as well as Potsdam). It's a great way to get around. Although, I also bought a bike at a flea market and I ride that almost always now that the weather is nice.
One thing to expect in Berlin is lots of waiting and long lines. Many offices have hours that change depending on the day of the week and don't seem to make any sense. But if you pay attention to the hours and go early, it shouldn't be too bad. There is quite a bit of bureaucracy that I had to go through in order to matriculate, including registering with the police, paying the fees, getting cleared for health insurance and so forth. Also, getting a residency permit can take quite a long time. However, there are special days just for university students when the lines aren't so long. I went bright and early on one of these days and the wait wasn't too bad. I'd definitely recommend getting these things done as early as possible.
Computers are another thing. There are several 'PC pools' at Humboldt but they are open strange hours and there are always long lines (of course, there are internet cafes but those cost money). I would definitely recommend bringing a laptop if possible! I'm glad I did, but my modem doesn't work here (not sure if that's true for all US computers...) so I would say don't necessarily count on having internet at home.
I just started the university so it's hard for me to say too much about it. The biggest problem I had was with the different types of classes. There are many different types (Vorlesung, Proseminar, Seminar, Uebung, etc.). As I understand it, to get Bard credit one must get a Leistungsschein from each class. It was difficult for me to figure out which classes gave out Leistungsscheins without going to all of them. So I think the classes will be confusing at first for students, but should become better before long. Oh, another problem I had is with the Vorlesungsverzeichnis (VV). There is a VV for all classes at Humboldt that you can buy, but it doesn't have descriptions of the courses. Then, each individual discipline comes out later with a Kommentierte VV that you must buy as well (or I believe they are usually on the internet). Because I was interested in courses from different disciplines, it was a bit hard to figure out when which classes started (for example, all the literature classes started the second week instead of the first). The Vorlesungs are generally huge, sometimes there are too many students for the amount of seats. The proseminars can be quite small, however. Students can also take classes at the Sprachenzentrum during the semester. I would recommend it -- it's a good way to work on grammar problems and so forth. I've eaten at the Mensa a couple of times. It's quite cheap but the food isn't too great. The Mensa Nord at Humboldt is much better than the one in the Hauptgebaeude.
I haven't had any experience with advisors, I'm not sure whether I have one. Basically I had to figure everything out by myself (with the help of other students of course), but everything worked out fine. I also took the intensive language class during March at the Humboldt Sprachenzentrum. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who's doing the exchange program. It's a great way to meet people and brush up on grammar and also get a feel for the university before classes start and there are thousands of people everywhere. The international office sometimes organizes activities which are quite enjoyable. There was a bus trip to Potsdam, for example, and there's a boat tour next weekend. I've also been doing a lot of exploring by myself... Berlin is great because it's a huge city, yet there are so many parks and also forests and lakes not far away.
Being a student in Berlin is great... there are student discounts for many things, in particular theater which can be extremely inexpensive. (I'm seeing Arturo Ui next month!!!) And there are tons of great museums. Daniel Libeskind's Juedisches Museum is particulary interesting because of its architecture. It's quite evident that the city is changing rapidly... there's construction everywhere and interesting new architecture can always be seen. All sorts of cuisines can be found all over the city, as well. It's not too easy to find german food, but Turkish and Asian food is everywhere. And I would definitely say that the cost of living here is less than in the U.S.
Andy, 2006:
When I decided that I wanted to study abroad in Germany last semester, I received a grant through my college of about one thousand dollars to help me pay for it. Although the grant essentially only covered my plane ticket; without it I probably wouldn't have been able to raise the money to pay for both the travel expenses as well as the cost of enrolling in the program at the same time, and so it was the grant that allowed me to go on this trip.
I enrolled in a summer program at the Humboldt University in Berlin called "Deutsch in Berlin," one of the schools three month-long summer courses. The course consisted of daily language courses of about 4 or 5 hours per day, which were split up into groups based on skill level. Each class had about 15 people in it. I thought that this was a good system, because it gave each person a good deal of time to speak and work on their own issues with other people who are at a similar skill level — and having the perspective of teachers who are also locals of the area was nice. In the evenings, there were a number of special events, tours etc., designed to give us a chance to see the city and surrounding areas and experience the culture of the city. I really enjoyed the way this was done, because each event was optional, giving us the opportunity to go to the events which seemed interesting (a number of them), but also allowing us time to go out and experience the city for ourselves. Over the weekends there was generally a lot more free time, and I some of which I spent looking around the city, and sometimes going a bit further afield. The last weekend, me and some of my friends there took a train to Dresden to look around that city and get a view of Germany outside of Berlin.
Another nice aspect of the program was the fact that the majority of other students there were not American, with the majority being from Spain, England, and Eastern Europe, giving me the chance to get a different perspective on the experience than if it had been a school field trip, for example. In fact, I spent far more time with non-Americans than with Americans, which I think was a great thing. Another good aspect of this was that many of the people I met did not speak English, or at least not very well, so I ended up practicing my German even when talking to the other people in the program outside of class. In general, the program was nice because it had a good mix of cultural and academic experiences, and I think I managed to improve my German skills while meeting people from all over the world, many of them Germans, but many others as well, and without the grant I would probably have been unable to do this.
Daniel, 2007:
Last year, I was fortunate enough to receive a Van Meeteren grant from the German Studies department at Bard College. With this stipend, I elected to return to Germany for a second time in order to better my grasp of spoken German. I first began studying German language in 2006 at Bard, and a year later I had already planned on declaring it as my second major in addition to music composition. But since this language was so fresh in my mind, I knew I had to submerge myself in it if I hoped to internalize it.
I thus spent my stipend entirely on tuition for a summer school program at Humboldt University. I studied in Berlin for 5 weeks, learning German language in a classroom with students from all around the world. Classes were lively and challenging; my instructor was always pushing us to the very last minute. As soon as I stepped into the student apartments, however, my heart sank. These apartments were located in former East-Berlin, by Tierpark, where cars race down the Autobahn only a few meters away from the glass zoo cages. The apartment was a stucco nightmare—every room looked the same. Worse, it was a 30 minute subway ride away from the center of town.
I didn't even unpack. I had made many friends in Berlin from my last summer there, and so I made arrangements to stay at an artist co-op in Kreuzberg. This new space proved to be an invaluable part of my studies for the summer. One of the house-members was a single father musician and his 4 year old child who didn't speak a word of English. Whereas many of the students in class relapsed into their mother-tongue during each classroom break, I had no choice but to continue wrangling the German language into a viable means of expression in order to simply communicate with my house-mates. At the end of the school-day, I would hop onto my bicycle and ride back to Kreuzberg to the bridge on Admiralstrasse, where I would perform on the street with my battery-powered amplifier until dusk. At the beginning of the summer, I was too shy to speak with people as they came by to thank me for the music. By the end of the summer, I was confident enough to argue about the moral implications of playing noisy music in the public sphere.
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