After an exciting and culturally very interesting first semester in Opole, the 9th generation of Europa Master had enjoyed their well deserved vacation...rumours say most of them got bored after a while without seeing each other, others deny it - a fact is that at the end of April we finally all found our way to the city of Mainz, happy and with full charged batteries, ready for our second semester!
After an "introduction" week, where most of us participated at organized Pub crawls and some got to know for the first time the German night life, we were all very excited to meet our German professors on the next monday for the introduction session.
After a presentation about the upcoming semester, Professor Arne Niemann and his colleagues encouraged us to enjoy some culinaries - a great idea in order to break the famous ice.
"Spundekäs" (a typical dip from the region around Mainz) with Brezeln (or pretzels and yes, German really do love them) were accompaigned by some glasses of crément.... truly a delicious combination!
The first day ended surprisingly less stressful than we had thought, we were indeed relieved of having had such warm welcome.
During the first "normal" uni days we should discover though - what a surprise - that also some work would have to be done. We learnt that there is no obligatory assistance in the classes at JGU Mainz (except the langugage ones). Nevertheless in every class we would have to fulfil a specific task, in nearly all of the cases, a presentation in addition with weekly quizzes, in order to get the necessary credit points.
Unlike our classes in Poland, which we had shared just among us, in Mainz we are mixed with students from other majors, a class can thereby consist of maximum 30 students.
Soon the days passed and the routine started to kick in - from having classes, to having lunch at the Mensa and going after that to the library in our building (a really modern one)
to finally ending the day with a drink at the charming bar "Baron" located right on the Campus (you can't miss it).
To draw a small conclusion from our first in Mainz, it's adequate to say that we have a lot of work to do (reading texts, prepare presenatations, etc.), buut at the same time we also find some precious spare time to hang and go out and discover new places.
The latter we did by assisting the yearly "Stadtrallye", organized by EmaDom. It consisted of a "paper chase", at which we were divided into groups and got a list with questions that we then had to solve. By doing that we discovered in a very smooth way the city of Johannes Gutenberg and some of its most famous places. As that would have not been fun enough already, we ended the day all together now at a well known bar.
Right now the 9th generation is especially looking forward to one big upcoming event, the "MEUM", the so called Model European Union Mainz, that will take place at the end of June. There we will take over the roles of EU politicians and simulate for a few days how European politics look like in Brussels - interesting debates and encounters are to be expected!
Does that sound interesting to you? Well, then stay tuned for more, no? Bis bald!
Antonio Mittelstädt