No wonder, with all the different things that we had to do in our semester abroad. Helena and Christina already wrote about moving into the halls, our first weeks and Christmas in London in detail. Therefore, I will give you an overview of our unforgettable time in this amazing city.

At first, we moved into our new homes, the Halls of Residence of the University of Westminster at the Harrow Campus. There we met out flat mates from all over the world that became our second family for the time we were there and maybe some will become lifetime friends. Who knows?

In the first weeks, we also had to get used to a different culture, as London is a place where lots of distinct ethnic groups, religions and cultures come together. You can really describe it as a big melting pot with a beautiful variety of different people.

We also had to learn how to study in a different system. Here Imainly talk about the graphic design courses that I took. Our assignments were divided into typography exercises, making a sketchbook and a final project for the course Typography & Communication and creating a homepage for all our research, writing an essay and again a final project for the course Authorship & Interaction. Compared to our studies in Germany, we were freer in choosing the theme for our final project as we had a general outline, which brought us a wide field of different topics we can select.

What I really appreciate about the university was the opportunity to join different societies. These are groups of people, who share the same interest in something (for example: sports, music, photography, anime, film – it can actually be anything people are interested in). There you can easily meet a lot of people, make new friends and plan activities together. It’s a pity that we don’t have something like that at the Macromedia.

Free time

In our free time, we had the wonderful opportunity to discover the beautiful city of London. There are the amazing sights like Big Ben & Houses of Parliament, London Eye, Buckingham Palace, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Kensington Palace, Westminster Cathedral and so much more. Nevertheless, behind all of these tourist attractions London is even more lovely with its little pubs, beautiful parks and very interesting museums. Furthermore, there are other beautiful places in Great Britain too which many of us visited. For example, Brighton, Bath, Wales, Edinburgh, Oxford and so on.

Another big deal in London of course is Harry Potter. Thus, if you like the boy who lived and his friends you should definitely visit King’s Cross Station and platform 9 ¾. There you have the opportunity to take a picture of you running into the wall with a trolley just as Harry did. Next to the platform, there is the 9¾-Shop where you can buy lots of different HP merchandise. Furthermore, for the big Harry Potter fans there is the “Warner Bros. Studio Tour – The Making of Harry Potter”. I spent a whole day there and can highly recommend visiting the tour. It was a magical day.

Christmas time

Before Christmas most of us had to finish our assignments which meant a stressful couple of weeks, but after that exhausting period, we appreciated our Christmas holidays even more. Although many of our German fellow students left London earlier to celebrate with their families at home, some of us celebrated Christmas and New Year’s Eve together in London. Indeed London is an amazingly beautiful city at Christmas time. With all the bright lights in the streets, lovely music in the shops and all the smiling faces around us, you get in the Christmas mood very easily.

Most of us experienced some problems as well as many moments of happiness in the last couple of months. But as we faced everything as a group – not only the happy but also the bad and sad moments – it all turned out well in the end and we had a great time together.

My personal conclusion

(maybe others see it differently)

I expected to learn a lot in my semester abroad, but I actually did learn much more. I did not only learn about design and improve my English but I learned about different cultures, religions and how to live with them as I shared my flat with a Greek, an Australian, one British and two Chinese girls. Most of all I learned about myself, I found out about a huge amount of things that I love or hate that I did not know before I came here. For example: I kind of look good with a headscarf (a Muslim friend that I met here taught me how to bind it), I love the traditional English Breakfast & Tea and the traditional English pies. Overall, I can say that I would choose London for a semester abroad again at any time.

Dublin – what can I say?

Marian, Lisa and Johanna already wrote about the things Ireland and especially Dublin has to offer. So I will focus on the “hard stuff”: college life, lectures, assignments, studying and the most frightening thing right now: exam week!

The first week in college was pretty exciting. New people everywhere,, a campus with many buildings and room numbers as well as lectures in English. Our modules were “Microeconomics”, “Marketing”, “Enterprise and Innovation” and “Understanding Audiences and Media Marketing”. Surprisingly it was very easy to follow the lectures. After one or two weeks, you didn’t even recognize that the lecturer speaks in a foreign language. We had three courses with around 40-60 students from all over the world and one course with only MHMK students. The most interesting lecture for me was “Enterprise and Innovation”, because it included topics related to what characteristics you need to become a successful entrepreneur or what is most important if you want to set up an innovative new business. The assignment in this module was also very interesting and challenging: we had to find different innovative ways to support a local charity in increasing their donations and publicity in general. For this assignment we conducted a survey in the city center and asked people about their donation patterns as well as their attitudes towards specific topics. The assignment also includes an oral presentation of our results and ideas.

The assignment in marketing was a “live-project”. We did a market research for a real cloud computing company as well as developing a marketing and PR- strategy based on our research results. Our presentation in front of the client worked very well and the client was happy with our results. Although it was difficult to present in English, we achieved a high mark.

There was one other assignment and an in-class test which meant a December full of studying. But it sounds worse than it actually was: of course we had enough time left to drink Guinness, go into pubs or to make trips to Belfast and the beautiful Giants Causeway.

After Christmas break

After a two weeks Christmas break in Germany I arrived in Dublin at the 7th of January. The following days are easy to describe: getting up, studying, eating, studying, eating and then sleeping. Especially for the microeconomics exam we had a lot of pages to learn. To make ourselves more comfortable with the situation we build a little “study camp” in our apartment. In our “study camp” only jogging pants, coffee and food were allowed.

Our first exam took place at the auditorium with 300 other students. The structure of the exams is different in Ireland: there are around six questions and you have to answer four of them. The answers are required in an essay style, which was quite unusual for us. It’s not enough to simply answer what is asked in the question, you have to write everything you know about a topic, even if its not specifically mentioned in the question. It’s the opposite of the German “being brief”.

Now there is one exam left, it’s in two days and we are all stressed and tired of studying. But besides all the work, we really enjoy our last days here at Griffith College.

All in all it’s to say that we had a great time here in Dublin! I would say one of the best in my life so far. The fist half of our college time was filled with parties, Guinness and sightseeing, but in the end it become obvious that it’s still a full semester which means a lot of work and sitting at the desk all day.

I would definitely recommend Dublin for a semester abroad because it’s an amazing city with open minded and friendly people! And I will be back soon: St. Patricks Day is on March 17th this year!

Accommodation

Starting with the accommodations which right from the beginning was a big failure. Of course we didn’t expect much from a student residence but we still wished for a better standard. For the price of 380-500€ a month the rooms were really basic, so it is better to find an accommodation not directly in the residence.

We know that with so many people on such a small place it’s really difficult for it to be quiet. The rules were not followed and even though during the day is was quite quiet in the night they all started to get active. It was pretty much standard for some of the residents to start partying at 11 pm until at least 4 am until they were shut down, so if you like to party every night, then Castellanza is the right choice. The ERASMUS guys did not know no boundaries. Also language problems were the biggest ones for us. We have to learn really good Italian to get further here.

The city & transportation

For the city: let’s be honest, it’s not a city, it’s mostly a village. Castellanza has about 5 streets and within a 5 minutes walk you’re already in the next village. The prices are horrendous. It’s like Castellanza thinks it’s Milan. Newsflash – it’s not.

Nevermind trying to find any stores, there aren’t any and if there are any they’re expensive as well. There are many restaurants but here the same applies: it’s really expensive. For the bars and cafés it’s the same. Oh and you better get used to really poor customer service, ’cause that’s the standard everywhere you go.

And not to forget: they can’t drive and you better be prepared to jump out of the way of the drivers. I think together we were almost hit by a car at least 10 times.

Another problem is transportation. There are no bus at night or Sunday so unless you have a car you you’re stuck here. Plus there are no price-cuts on the bus tickets for the students. So if you want to go to Milan, which is 1-hour train ride away from here, you need to cash out at least 12€ and don’t even bother to plan a trip at night or on Sunday. Unless you feel like walking 35 minutes to the train station.

Couldn´t enjoy the experience

For the University we had following problems: wrong courses and languages difficulties. As governing the matters quickly, we weren’t satisfied until the end.

All in one it was a disappointment, we didn’t get to enjoy the abroad experience.

The only positive thing to happen was to get to know the Macromedia students from the other campus and some other students from abroad, like the ERASMUS guys, who came from all over the world. Friendships were born since we all kept together and also some decided to stay a little bit longer to chill with their new friends in Milano. Together we like to laugh and also experienced things. But still we’re all more than happy to be back home.

E.B. and T.A.