Hi! So I went to Paris last weekend with three of the other girls on the program. It was so beautiful, and it was only three hours by train. We left really early on Saturday morning, but we had to come back Sunday afternoon so we only had about a day. Paris is so amazing though. Our hotel room was on the 24th floor and our windows looked directly out at the Eiffel Tower. It was incredible, especially when the Tower lit up at night. We also did a sightseeing tour on the Seine River. We saw the Louvre, Notre Dame, and Champs d’Elysees, but we didn’t have time to explore anything, which was a little frustrating. However, I’m so glad that we went.
Anyway, back to daily life here in Pforzheim. Every morning we wake up, get ready, and go to class. There are little clothing stores, pharmacies, and bakeries everywhere, so we normally get breakfast from a bakery and eat it while waiting for the bus. The bus is free for students (or its built into our tuition, I’m not sure which). Then we go to class for most of the day and come back to the hostel and sleep, shower, shop, run errands, or study.
For the most part, university life here is very similar to Penn State. The differences that I notice are small. For instance, the doors are strange. While in the U.S. doors that you push to open have a bar or something, here everything has a handle. I’ve looked like an idiot a few times pulling on doors that you have to push. However, most push doors have signs that say push. In German (drucken in case you were wondering). It takes a little while to figure that out. The locks are also different. For many of them, you open the door by turning the key to a certain point and holding it there, not by pushing it all the way around until it clicks. I don’t understand it either.
Germans are also a lot more green than Americans. You can return bottles to the place of purchase and be refunded fifteen or twenty cents for recycling. They have these special machines that collect the bottles that are kind of cool as well.
Another thing that I like here are the dogs. You see so many more people just walking along with their dogs here. Pets are welcome almost anywhere, including trains. Personally, I have to think highly of a culture that values man’s best friend!

Location: Pforzheim