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Hello!

Just a "small" catch-up of what is going on here in Köln! The previous post is about Bratislava and we guess it has already been almost a month.. So lots of things have happened after that! :)

After that trip our families came to visit us! First came Maiju's mom and sister and Jenna's whole family. They spent here only one weekend which was totally not enough, but it was really nice to see them after a long time and also show them our current home town! :)

Sisters

Family selfie! :)

Sisters 

The next week Maiju's father and his family visited Köln! They stayed here from Wednesday until Sunday so we had a nice amount of time to be together, see the city, visit the Christmas markets and everything :)

This week was our last week of school! (It is crazy, how fast the time flies...) We already had finished some courses so we didn't have that much actual school. But we spent a lot of time at school finishing our final group works and essays.. But now, everything is done and next week the exams start! The school has reserved two weeks time for the exams but we are lucky to have our last exam already on Monday of the second week. This means that we have the whole week to meet with friends and get ready for going home.

This week we had two events at CBS! On Tuesday we had a farewell party for all the international students at CBS. Actually, it was not a party, more like a get-together event but it was nice to see everybody! Furthermore it didn't feel like a farewell party, we think that nobody really wants to talk about going home at this point..
On Friday the school arranged a "winter party". We would call it pikkujoulut. They served glühwein, chocolate and cookies and played Christmas music. We would not call that event party either :D We just sat there together chatting and spending time together. But it was really nice and cozy and we had a real Christmas feeling :)

Kinderpunsch for Jenna! XD

Glühwein =hot red wine

Yesterday we celebrated Thomas' birthday! We started our evening at the dorms and then went to Diamonds. We had fun :) It was nice that so many people participated!

The only normal picture of us

Rachel, Louis, Jenna, Maiju

Furthermore life here has been quite normal: school, friends, being sick (SERIOUSLY: We are sick all the time in turns... When one of us feels better, the other is sick... And it gooooes around all the time). We have of course visited a lot of Christmas markets, but we will do a separate post about them!

Next post is going to be about Erasmus in general! We will tell you about all the bureaucracy etc.
Bis später,
Maiju&Jenna

Public transportation in Köln

Hallo!

Here in Köln the public transportation is really good and totally different compared to Oulu. So we wanted to tell you something about it! Since we are students at CBS and have paid a fee of 168€ we are allowed to use all the public transportation for free! Also in the evenings after 7 pm and during weekends we are allowed to take one person for free with our ticket.

There are many tram (train) lines going all around the city and in addition there is also a bus system. The trams cover pretty much the whole city and it is very efficient to move around with them! An interesting fact is that the trams go sometimes underground and sometimes on the ground. Many stations have tram stops both on the ground and also underground (U-bahn).

All the trams in Köln, looks pretty complicated but actually it is very simple!

We live at Rudolfplatz and lines 1, 7, 12 and 15 stop here. The trams 1 and 7 go on the ground but 12 and 15 are underground trams. In the beginning we were a bit confused about it but now it is no problem anymore! The tram stop at Rudolplatz is also only a few minutes walk from our apartment. Usually the trams go approximately in every 5 minutes or less. Let's see how we will manage back in Oulu where the bus goes every half an hour :D Here if the wait is over 5 minutes we both are so frustrated and angry..:D:D

For going to school we can take the 12 or 15 from Rudolfplatz and it takes 6 minutes to Eifelstrasse, since it is only 3 stops away.  It really is very easy to use the trams!

We have lived here in Köln for 3 months and we have been checked for tickets only twice. Many people probably use the trams without a ticket since they are not checked so often! For example in Berlin it is totally different, they check the tickets all the time.

Rudolfplatz U-bahn

Our own Petteripaikka <3

Eifelstrasse

CBS tram!

Next post is going to be about in general, what is going on here ! :)

Byeee

Maiju&Jenna

Cologne Business School

Hallo!

In this post we are going to tell you a bit of our school, Cologne Business School = CBS.
The school is a private business school and part of European University of Applied sciences. It was founded in 1993.  The school offers both Bacherlor and Master studies in English and German. And an interesting detail is that all the teachers in CBS are freelancers. The study fee per year is approximately 10 000 €, but we as exchange students don't need to pay anything.

The school is located really near to the city centre of Köln, in Hardefuststrasse. (near tram stops Eifelstrasse, Eifelplatz and Ulrepforte).

CBS is a new partner for our school in Finland, so we are the first exchange students from OUAS. Even the head of our degree programme hasn't visited the school (yet) :D
We don't know the number of the students in CBS, but at the moment we are approximately 180 exchange students studying here!

Now some pictures of the school building!

Hardefuststrasse

Cafeteria

"This person is responsible for my future"

Hallway. Can you see the painting? At first we were wondering all the weird letters in it, but eventually we found out that it says "Does CBS talk your talk?"

The lobby

Next post is going to be about the public transportation in Köln.

Bis bald!
Maiju&Jenna

Comparison of two student trip organizations

Hallo!

Now that we have been traveling several times with those student trip organizations, pm2am student trips and Studifahrten, we decided to make a small comparison of them!
We will summarize all the trips we have been to with the companies and tell our opinion about the organizations.

The first trip we made was to the beautiful Amsterdam in the Netherlands! The trip was organized by Studifahrten and the cost was only 30€. We spent only one day there, but it was actually enough :) The organization of the trip went okay. We felt that there were too many breaks during the bus transfer to Amsterdam and we could have traveled there faster without so many stops. Otherwise everything went well except when we were supposed leave from Amsterdam. We were scheduled to leave in the evening around 11 and everybody was there on time waiting for the bus, but the most important thing, the buses, were not there :D We have no idea what was the problem, but we had to wait for them about half an hour in the cold..It wasn't so nice, but otherwise we didn't have any problems with the organizers!

Yes, we had fun in Amsterdam! :)

The next trip we made was to the Oktoberfest in Munchen! This time we wanted to try the other company pm2am and chose the trip by them. We spent one day in Oktoberfest and the cost was in total 55€. In this trip, we had no problems with the organizers, everything went well! Except of course something had to happen so our bus broke down during the drive to Munchen :D but luckily it wasn't anything the bus driver couldn't fix!

Welcome to Oktoberfest!

After the Oktoberfest the next trip the made with the student trip organizations was to the Rhine Waterfalls and Zürich! We also traveled to other places but the trip were not with the companies, so we will leave them out of this post :D

The Zürich trip was again with the pm2am Student Trips, for some reason we preferred this compnany and did all the other trips except the first one with them. The Zürich trip went again with no specific problems.

In all of the trips we have had the same problem and it is that there is too much time reserved for free time. Normally we have free time about 10 hours after a sightseeing tour where we already see all the most important sights. What can you do after that with 10 hours? Of course there is always something more to see and do, but not for 10 hours. With all the trip we could have left back 1-2 hours earlier in the evening. In the Zürich trip was specially seen since the city was not that big and it was really expensive so you really couldn't do much there :D

The beautiful Alps in Zûrich!

The last trip we have made and will make was a really ultimate student trip! We visited Wien, Budapest and Bratislava with pm2am. Three cities in three countries and just four days! The cost was 149€, not bad for seeing three cities :) 

With this trip we actually had bigger problems...We were scheduled to arrive back to Köln on Monday morning around 9, on Sunday afternoon we heard that we will not be arriving to Köln in the morning. We were told that we will arrive around noon, which would have been okay, but it turned out that at 13.30 we were still nowhere near Köln. We had a presentation in school at 16.15. so we needed to take a train from Bochum to Köln to make it on time! We were a bit nervous to say the least...:D Luckily we made it but this didn't really leave us with a good image of the company...

Not until today when I (Jenna) received a phone call from the pm2am company telling that we had complained about the Budapest trip...I wasn't sure what to expect :D He told me that as compensation we could participate to their Paris trip this weekend for free or get a 30€ discount on any other trip! This was a big surprise and a very good one. This made us very happy and actually this is the way companies should handle complaining customers :D Big thanks to pm2am to making the effort and offering this for us!

Now a more general opinion about the student trip organizations. The business idea that they have to organize these trips to international student is really great and this is an awesome opportunity for us to see Europe with a student budget!

Even though the idea is very good, we have some improvement ideas for the organizations. There is too much time reserved for free time in the evenings, we could always head back around 8 or 9 pm not at 11 pm. Also for Studifahrten, they could have less breaks during the drive to and from the destination. We think that pm2am is doing well in this aspect,  they don't have too much or too long breaks. 

Also to look at the images of the organizations. Pm2am is a much more professional company and it actually has professional looking Facebook page and flyers etc. Studifahrten on the other hand is less professional, it feels more like a "family company". 

Hopefully this wasn't too heavy to read, for a change not so many pictures :D We have had an amazing time in all of the trips and we have seen so many places in just a few months! Such a good thing that somebody is organizing the trips for us! 

Next post will be about our school!

Bis später!

Jenna&Maiju

Bratislava

Hallo!

On Sunday afternoon around 1 pm we arrived to the last stop of our trip, Bratislava, Slovakia! At this point everyone was already a bit tired from the trip, so we were hoping just to spend couple of hours getting to know Bratislava. But actually for our surprise it turned out that we need to stay in Bratislava for 9 hour, since the bus drivers need to rest.....Nobody was happy about this and we all wanted to leave earlier, but apparently it is in the German law, so we had to spent the 9 hours in Bratislava.

Our day began with a sightseeing tour. The guide of the tour was really nice and she knew a lot of stuff about the history, only downside was that it was really cold there, only +8°C and really windy...(haha not really cold for Finnish people, but we are used to the German weather!) The tour lasted only about an hour and that was actually enough, since the city was quite small. And now some pictures of the city!

Danube river

St. Martin Cathedral

St. Martin Cathedral

Holocaust Memorial

Embassy of the United States 

Advertising Nokia Lumia in Bratislava :D

Bratislava Opera

The oldest hotel in Bratislava, Carlton

Our group for the sightseeing tour!

At the end of the tour the guide recommended us a good buffet restaurant in the city center, so after the tour we decided to go there! It was a nice place and the food was okay too. The buffet cost 6€ and did not include drinks.

After eating we all just spent some time there, because they had free wifi :D At some point we decided to continue our way. We wanted to go shopping, because we had already basically seen the whole city. The guide recommended us a new shopping mall just a 10 minutes walk away from the restaurant! Also during the tour she only recommended us different shopping malls, apparently there is nothing else to do in Bratislava :D We found the shopping center and spent the evening there.

The mall closed at 9 pm and our bus was scheduled to leave at 10.45, so we needed to find a warm place to pass the time...surprisingly we ended up in a McDonald's where also all the others from our bus were :D:D

The bus didn't leave on time, surprise! And there were also some troubles at the border between Slovakia and Czech Republic. We had a presentation on Monday afternoon at 4 pm, so we started to worry if we are going to make it at all since the journey was going to last about 16 hours. We got closer and closer to Köln but not nearly on time so in Bochum we decided to take train in order to arrive in Köln on time. Luckily we made it to the presentation but not thanks to the bus!

Originally we were supposed to arrive back to Köln already at 9 am. Nobody informed us that the schedule is going to change, They only told us about this on Monday morning..and they never apologized to us about the delay. This trip didn't leave that good impression of the organizers. Despite the difficulties the cities were really beautiful and we had a great time! We think this might have been our last trip :(

The next post is going to be a comparison between the two student trip organizations we have used: pm2am student trips and Studifahrten.

Bis bald!
Jenna&Maiju