I just came back home after spending 5 months in Germany and I already miss it. Being an international student is great and I think applying for this scholarship was probably the best decision I ever made. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I decided to stay for another semester. So after visiting all my friends and family in Romania, I’ll go back and continue my Erasmus adventure.

I studied in Ilmenau, a small city (judging by its size, it’s actually more like a village :p ) in Thüringen, East Germany. Ilmenau is surrounded by mountains, so you have a really great view and fresh air. But there is also a drawback to this: rainy and cold weather. However, I got used to it and learned to appreciate sunny days more than I did before.

Technische Universität Ilmenau is (obviously) a technical university, but it also has a media institute where I studied Applied Media Science. The classes I attended were quite interesting, very practical and project-based. I enjoyed working with German students and it was a great opportunity to make new friends among my colleagues.

Living in a campus is really great! You have everything you need within a five-minutes distance. Dorms, faculties, cafeteria, clubs, coffee shop, sports facility. Ok, living in a bigger city where you can do more activities is also nice, but Ilmenau is cozy and confortable in a way a big city could never be. It’s easier to get together with your friends,  get to classes or just go for a coffee. The thing I liked most was that you could go visit friends without a particular reason, just go to their place and hang out. This is more or less impossible in a big city: you don’t just change 2 buses and a subway to chat for 10 minutes.

I still can’t believe how many people I got to meet and how many friends I made. I was especially close to Spanish guys and girls, four guys from Mexico, a guy from Slovenia, another one from Peru and a few German people. It was interesting to see how easy you make new friends in this circumstances. We all felt a bit lost and needed somebody to share that with. When speaking about friends, I can’t not speak about the Romanian girls I shared this experience with. It was great being there with them, we had so much fun and I already miss them all! We got very close in the past few months and I couldn’t imagine Erasmus without them!

Since I came to Ilmenau, I also got to travel a lot. Not only Germany, but also France, Switzerland, Belgium and The Netherlands. I’m not sure why, but I felt more free to go anywhere I wanted and it was so easy to hop in a train and just go wherever I want.

I’m really looking forward to going back there in a few weeks! It might sound strange, but I felt like home in Ilmenau.