Girls in Cologne: First week in Cologne

Hallo!

Now we have stayed here for one week, and it is time to share the experiences.

Monday 25.8.14

Our first day in Cologne started with a welcoming reception of CBS. At first we thought that it would be for the international students, but it turned out to be a formal reception for all the new students of CBS and their families. People were wearing dresses, suits and all in all it seemed like a really important thing to the new students. The program consisted of many speeches that were held in German, but translated in English (badly) to powerpoint slides. :D It was quite stupid just sit there without understanding a lot.

During the reception, a girl named Moni came to sit next to us. We started to talk about who we are, where we come etc. She was really nice and offered to drive us to CBS. It was good that we did not have to walk because probably we would have been lost (which happened in the afternoon..).

When we arrived to the school, we noticed multiple tents serving typical German food and drinks. There were bratwurst, potato pancakes with apple sauce and of course Kölsch. Even though we both hate beer, we decided to share one glass. We both took one zip, and honestly, it was horrible... We just left the full glass somewhere, oops.. But we loved the bratwurst and the pancakes!

Alcohol-free LEMONADE... tasted like beer. Not good.

In Germany even lollipops are made of sausage :D

Besides eating, nothing that special happened that day. The dean of the school welcomed us and basically that was it.
After that we walked home.. Or, we walked around the city because we got lost :D Finally we found our home with a little help of Google Maps.. That evening both of us were really tired because of the travel the day before, so we did nothing but unpack and grocery shopping.

By the way, it is so much cheaper here than in Finland!! Especially alcohol. For example 6-pack of beer costs under 2 €, wines are 2-5 €, vodkas 5 €... But also food is cheaper. After the grocery shopping we checked our receipt and noticed that every product (excluding minced meat) was under one euro.

Tuesday 26.8.14

On Tuesday we needed to take our computers with us to log in to the CBS wifi, intranet and so on.
We also had a presentation about German people and how to cope with them, but we expected more from it. It was just 2 slides telling like "German people are punctual" (which they are not! Compared to Finnish) "German people are direct" but nothing more specific. Then we also got more information about the dates of the semester, exams etc.

The day ended with a German language test. First we had the written part, which was ok. After that we had the oral part= discussion with the German teacher. He was nice, talking about Finnish cities and sightseeings. It was still kinda hard to speak in German, because you do not need to do it in Finland at all.

First school lunch: Hänchenschnitzel mit Curryreis! Meaning chicken and rice with curry. And of course Coca-Cola :D This cost 4,50 €

Wednesday 27.8.14

On Wednesday we had a whole-day event located in the Rheinenergie- stadion. It is FC Köln's home stadion! We met at the CBS lobby at 9 in the morning, and then we took a tram to the stadion. All of the students were wearing the similar green CBS t-shirts.When we arrived to the stadion, we were divided into teams which were about to compete against each other.

The competition happened in the field next to the stadion

Jenna's team banner! Tiescher is Kölsch dialect and means a tiger

Jenna's team. GO TIESCHERS!

We were in different teams: Jenna was in Tieschers and Maiju in Green Tigers. Maiju's team actually had a slogan: We are green, we are tigers, there's no chance for you to fight us!!!
It turned out that both our teams suck: there were 9 different games and both of our teams won only two of them. It was still fun! One not that nice thing during the day was that, every time we had a break (lunch or coffee) the whole team just disappeared and it was really hard to find them (the similar shirts huh..)

After the games we had a barbecue party. There was sausages, bacon, chicken, different salads and of course Kölsch! We were told that now that we are in Köln, we need to drink Kölsch even though it is bad... So I (Maiju) made a trick and mixed Kölsch and Fanta... It was actually good :D And I think the others thought that I was drinking beer haha. (No it wasn't! -Jenna)
We agreed that we will meet in the evening in a club called Flamingo, so we went home to rest a bit and get ready for the evening.
We were supposed to go to the club around 11-12 but we made it there after midnight. And the queue.. It was LONG. We stood in the line 1,5 hours and it was not even close to get in. The clock was 2 when we decided to give up and go home. What a fun night yeah..

Thursday 28.8.14

Thursday was the day to have a walking tour around the city! We met each other at CBS and then took the tram to the Dom/Hbf station. We had a guide who told us about the Dom and surroundings.

Jenna, Martyna and Maiju

It is HUGE!

Then we walked to the Altstadt of Köln and Hohenzollenbrücke (bridge Hohenzollen). There were lots of love locks! We are so gonna take our men here when they visit us!