Welcome to see my experiences in Bielefeld, Germany!
Bielefeld (Population 340000) is located in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia in western Germany close to the bigger cities Hannover and Dortmund. Also the Düsseldorf Airport is just under 2 hours regional train ride away from here.
My student exchange started on the second week of September. For starters, going to student exchange might be the best time of your life so I recommend highly to apply for it!
After arriving to Germany, my furnished apartment was already ready for moving in, since Hochschule Bielefeld made sure to provide affordable student housing to us and it was very easy to just move in and just get the mandatory paperwork done. Freshers weeks lasted for first 2 weeks which included all kinds of fun activities and the German crash course. That was a perfect start for a semester instantly getting many new friends to spend time with and dive into German language.
After freshers weeks we had one week time free before actual school started which gave us time to travel around. Paying the semester ticket which was 330€/semester, gives you access to all regional trains, metro, trams, buses etc. in the NRW-state area which is upgradable for only about 14€/per month to cover the whole Germany. Not a bad deal at all 🙂
Studying itself its kind of similar here than in Finland. Having groupworks, presentations and exams like in TAMK. Classes are mostly lectures and discussing about the topics and assignments in class. All of my courses are in English and I have 5 different courses here including German course. Studies are in Business Administration. Schedule is quite “empty” and classes are from Monday to Thursday, Monday being the longest day. Even though there’s just maximum 3 hours of classes a day Tue-Thu, classes require more independent work so the amount of courses is enough. That is giving more flexibility if you want to travel more but still focus on the studies.
Teachers here are helpful and punctuality here is highly valued depending on the teachers. Teachers are easy to communicate with. Special credits to HSBI’s International Office where the help is available quite fast and informing students about coming important stuff and also some events that are made just for us Erasmus students. Those events have been a nice addition to normal school life here, like visiting Dr. Oetker HQ, city tours, Pumpkin carving event, Christmas event and many more.
Bielefeld itself is quite compact city with good tram and bus connections inside the city area. City centre is compact with newer part with shopping streets and old town with a lots of restaurants. Comparing to Tampere, the thing missing here are the lakes which are almost non-existant in the city area. At least the alternative to Pyynikki/Pispala can be found which is Teutoburg forest with lots of paths and views towards the city.
Erasmus group here is quite small with about 50 people staying at HSBI this semester. The atmosphere along our erasmus group is great, everyone knows each other and we are spending a lot of time with each other. Most students of our Erasmus student group live in about 500m radius from each other making our daily life easy and having a great international community with people around the world.
NRW area is very easily accessible just taking a train from Bielefeld main railway station. In the state area theres about 18 million inhabitants with various big cities like Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund and Münster. Talking about trains, in Germany you have to be prepared to at least delays and in worst case scenario cancellations which are happening quite usual, at least some train connection is cancelled every time when I travel (Thanks Deutsche Bahn).
There has been also time for travelling inside of the Germany like Cologne and Oktoberfest in Hannover and I also visited Belgium before the semester actually started. Distances here are quite small to go to neighboring countries so its relatively easy to travel around.
Christmas markets are a big thing which you should definitely visit at least once. Even in Bielefeld city centre area there was like 5 different areas/squares with markets and they were very popular. We even visited local Christmas market with our own German teacher to give us the “authentic” German Christmas market experience with Glühwein.
Talking also about the weather in a typical Finnish way, summery weather lasted much longer. Winter is very different compared to Finland. Snow stayed just for 1,5 weeks at the turn of the month of November and December and ever since it has been mostly windy and rainy around 5-10 degrees, so if you are having Erasmus in this area you know to be prepared for that. 😀
For conclusion the semester has been memorable for now, having no regrets and I’m waiting for the last experiences with my friends and travelling around before coming back to wintery Finland. Can recommend choosing Bielefeld for Erasmus destination even though it being the city of the conspiracy “Bielefeld doesn’t exist” 🙂
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