Exams at CBS

Hallo!

It is the end of semester here in Köln and that means finals and exam week! At CBS all the exams are held at the end of the period, the school has reserved two weeks for them. So now everyone is really stressed out and trying to read for their exams :D We are both very lucky since we have our last exam already on Monday and after that we can just relax and enjoy the last days in Köln!

Surprisingly when we are in Germany, CBS has a lot of rules for the exams. One exam lasts for one hour only, you would think that yay!! only one hour but actually it's not good. One hour is not enough when the teachers put so many questions to the exams that you don't have time to answer them properly.

We are also not allowed to write our names to the exams but instead everyone has an individual exam number that needs to be written to the papers. This way the teachers can grade the exams objectively. But actually it seems stupid since the teachers always check the participants in the lectures and they say that participation affects on your grade...How can it affect when they don't know who wrote the exam?

CBS also has an examination office which handles all the stuff related to exams and course works. All course works are returned to the examination office, not to the teachers like in our home university. The examination office makes the schedule for all exams and they are overseeing the exams. This was a bit surprising for us. The teacher cannot affect to the exam date and that the teacher is not present in the exam to give you advice or answer your questions.

Here the exams usually make 100% of your grade and there is a lot more theory in the lectures, so we have been really studying for them! Seems crazy to be studying many hours in the library since we haven't really done anything during the semester :D

International Human Resource Management </3 :'(

The face when you realize you have spent 5 hours in the library and learnt nothing... :'D

Our new home: Köln University Library and Lesesaal

Two exams to go! Then we are freeeeeee!! <3

Next post is going to be about Christmas Markets.

Jenna&Maiju

Erasmus

Hallo!

This post is going to be full of (boring) information about Erasmus. :D What we needed to do before coming to Germany, about the documents and assignments, also about grants and so on. Like everyone already might now, Erasmus is an European exchange programme for university students.

Our process started already in March, when we needed to apply for going for an exchange. We applied only to Cologne Business School, even though our school offered a lot of destinations. We estimate that there were like 50 different places to choose from. We needed to wait approximately two weeks and in the end of March we got a result, that we were accepted and would be the two lucky ones from Finland to go and study in CBS! At the moment when we found out Maiju couldn't stop smiling because it was like a dream come true. (I remember, when I told Jenna about it, she looked actually quite terrified XD)

After a while we got the final acceptance also from CBS and then we started to fill in all the documents: Learning Agreement, Grant Application, Course Registration and Student Dormitory-application. By the way, we sent the dormitory application to CBS in May and they answered that the dorm was already full. So you need to be really quick if you want to get a room from there :)
Filling the documents was a mess: we printed, scanned, filled them like million times again and again and it didn't help that Maiju was in Helsinki and Jenna in Oulu.. :D But eventually we succeeded!

Before we left, we needed to do some pre-assignments. They are part of "Valtteri"-course. That course is mandatory for all students going for an exchange and it is worth 3 credits. There were 6 assignments: CV, presentation about Finland, budget estimation, revising history of Germany, expectations about the exchange and description of language preparation. All the assignments were okay but writing about history of Germany was quite horrible, to be honest :D

Also before leaving here we needed to make a notification to KELA that we are going to stay abroad the next semester. Normally we get study aid 268 € per month, but now that we are staying abroad it is 9 € more :'D jeij....

All Erasmus students get a study grant and the amount depends on the country where you go. Countries are divided to two categories and Germany belongs to category 2. Our Erasmus grant is 210 € per month or 7 € per day. We got 80 % of the grant in September and the rest we will get after returning all the necessary documents (=transcript of records and learning agreement)  to our home university. Furthermore we got a travel grant of 400 € from our home university.
Also it is good to know that our school gives scholarships to students who are going abroad. Maiju applied one (btw it was really easy, only one paper) and got a grant of 300 €.

During the stay here we needed to fill the Learning Agreement again, because there was some changes. We chose our courses already in the spring, but we couldn't fit to those courses and we were put into different ones, so we needed to make a new learning agreement. We actually have been delaying doing that the whole semester, but when we finally did it it took like 5 minutes :'D haha..

When we go back to Finland we need to of course return the documents like mentioned earlier, but also write a report of our exchange. It is going to be in our school's intranet to give information for students going or planning to do their exchange after us :)

We think this was it! Probably not relevant to most of our readers but hopefully someone finds this informative and useful :D

Next post is going to be about exam period here in CBS.
Tschüss!
Maiju&Jenna

Recently

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