I have now spent three months getting to know Wels and my exchange university — the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria. Wels is a small city (around 60 000 inhabitants) in the norther parts of Austria. University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria has four different campuses in Upper Austria, and the Wels campus is focused on engineering.
Life in Wels has been quaint and peaceful. The nature is always close, and all the essentials are within walking distance of the city centre. I also like, how you can see the long history of the city in its buildings. Living in a small city does have its down sides as well. For example, the student life is less extensive compared to Tampere. Couple of times a month there is a Bier Standl (beer stand), where students gather in the campus courtyard to drink alcohol and hang around, but that is pretty much it.
But the good news is that travelling away from Wels to a bigger city or a different country all together is relatively quick, easy and affordable. It only takes one hour to go to Salzburg and one and a half hours to Vienna by train for example. One of my favourite memories from this exchange was a road trip, where we went to Graz, Budapest and Bratislava.
Studying in Wels has its differences compared to studying in Tamk. For instance, most the courses are only worth 1-3 ECTS, which means that I have to have thirteen different courses to achieve 30 ECTS. Also lessons here last much longer; four-hour and fifteen-minute lessons are entirely normal, but it also means that there aren’t that many lessons of one course. My favourite difference is that at the end of each lesson students knock on the table to show appreciation to the professors.
All in all, living and studying in Wels has it ups and downs, but I have learnt a lot from Austrian culture and gotten so many new experiences, which would not have been possible without this exchange.
Comments