Bavarian Adventure Pt. 1
This post is about the first semester of my Erasmus exchange in TUM (Technical University of Munich) Germany🇩🇪 from Chalmers Sweden🇸🇪.
Early Scouting
During the semester break, I chose to explore the Alps instead of enjoying the 18 hours of daylights in Scandinavian. It was the exam weeks of TUM when I visited Munich. I sited in front of the Parabola Slide in CIT building, joined the welcome meeting via Zoom. Following their advice, I immediately started my house finding in Munich. After more than 100 applications, I finally got a cozy place in Schwabing.
Apart from getting a place to stay, this "30-day (NOT) free trial" gave me an expectation of what my life will be for the following year. I also got to know the most delicious dishes in Mensa quite in advance.
I also travelled to Switzerland🇨🇭, "The Notorious B.A.H.N" (not a German Rapper) drove me to my bff. It is a beautiful but expensive heaven.
Chaos
I went back to Sweden in August, with the feeling of something went wrong. The Swedish visa extension I applied in April 2023 went totally silent. I tried to contact my case officer, and had some really bad experience. I decided to start my "Plan B". I contacted TUM and German embassy, they gave me every information I need to start the German visa application.
I got a termin in October in Stockholm. Although a lot of documents were needed, the whole process only took one month.
This was the most difficult, most stressful part of my first semester exchange study. From October, the start of TUM's winter semester, till the day I got my passport back from German Embassy, the stress piled up. It was my partner and friends' support made me the way to Munich.
Servus
Finally, I arrived Munich again at the end of November. Like every other settlers here, I have to anmeldung my address, get a bank account, find a family doctor... Everything makes me happy because I'm finally here.
I lost my position in Praktikum because I cannot attend in person, but for other courses I was not lagging behind too much (thanks to TUM-Live). The Oktoberfest passed by but we prepared and celebrated Christmas together.
Courses and Exams
As a bigger uni (of ~50k students), TUM has more types of courses, with finer granularity. Most of the lecture-based courses have 6 or 8 credits, seminars have 4 credits, and praktikums have 10 credits. Lecture-based courses are examined by written exams, seminars are evaluated by presentation and/or report. Some praktikums are lab course, they're evaluated by lab report and presentation. Some praktikums are project course, they're evaluated by final project.
Exams in my home university have a length of 4 hours, getting 80% of the points will give you the highest grade (5.0). In TUM, you only have 90-120 minutes to finish lot of questions, this is called "Überhangklausur" (overhang exam). But don't be panic, to get a highest grade (1.0), you don't have to get full points, or certain percentage of points. You ONLY have to beat your peers, become top x% of all hundreds of students (grading distribution or bar is defined by the examiner).
One important thing to know is, once you passed one exam, you can never attend any of its retake. For someone who cares the grade, getting a 4.0 (lowest passing grade) is the biggest nightmare. Many students fail the exam on purpose when they find it's not worth to pass it this time😱.
Entertainment
As a fan of FCB for more than 15 years, of course I will be happy to move to Munich. Now I live only about 1300 kilometers away from my favorite team - FC Barcelona❤️💙!
I boulder 2-3 times a week at Boulderwelt, but Fysiken Klätterlabbet Centrum will always be my favorite boulder gym.
Pt. 2
The adventure is a continuous and differentiable function, I'm still exploring and optimizing it, and I know what direction to go.