After having been in Tübingen for a few days now, I have come to love the city an its charming atmosphere as well as the other Austauschstudenten in my intensive  German course.

I’m living in a so-called student city, which is basically a bunch of dorms that are all located in an area that no car can reach on top of a hill (all though the car bit isn’t exactly true, it best describes the feel of the area). My Wohngemeinschaft (WG) is made up of two hallways, each with three rooms and a bathroom that are connected by a kitchen, shared amongst 6 people. It’s really a lovely building and seems to have been recently renovated. What I really like about the student housing here is the fact that there are so many windows, each of which can be fully opened and are paired with the ever-charming Rolladen. Rolladen are a special type of blind that are attached to the outside of the window and can be changed to either block out the light, which make them great if your room is next to a street lamp. I’m in a single which is the norm here in Germany, and nice because I can go to bed as early or late  as I want (lately it’s been rather early, since I’m still suffering slightly from the effects of jetlag, although much less so than when I first got here).

Every day, I take the bus down the hill and into town to the university, where I have two classes to help me improve my German. One is based mostly on grammar and the other on overall understanding. I’m actually quite glad to have the grammar course, because we’ve been working on tenses like Futur I and Futur II that I haven’t reviewed in a while and doing really specific things like practicing pronouncing vowels with our mouths open at the right distance, which helps to immensely improve accents. Everyone in the course is required to speak German with each other and this has been working perfectly EVEN OUTSIDE OF CLASS!!! Anyone who knows me, could probably automatically recognize that this has been a long-standing dream of mine, to be surrounded by other people who want nothing other than to speak German (which admittedly comes true at my job during the summer, but seeing this outside the confines of Waldsee is somehow really surprising anyway). The second class is also fun, but I’m really loving the grammar bit.

I have also come to know a bit about the city. There is a gorgeous mix of old and new buildings, although in the main part of the city, the historic tends to be the best. It is also an incredibly green city. Everywhere you go there is a gorgeous view of the nearby mountains, which are currently a deep green color, meaning that soon they will turn brilliant orange (or at least I’m counting on that, but based on how many times I’ve heard discussion of climate change so far, they may stay green the whole year). On every street there are bike paths, which are surprisingly not separated from the pedestrian sidewalk (I can attest that I have almost been run-over on a number of occasions).  But everything is accessible by foot, even-supposedly- the student village that I live in, although I haven’t been able to get up early enough to try it out.  The famous hills that I have heard so much about haven’t gotten to me yet, but I do suppose however that on the planned hiking excursion listed in my German course syllabus will be the true test of the nature of Tübingen’s geography.

Bis Bald!