Travel stories

An Unexpected Journey

Wednesday, September 4, 2019. The alarm rings and the adventure begins. We had a long day of travel ahead to Hamburg and then by train to Emden, but Sergi and I were more excited and nervous than anything else. At some point during the trip, we managed to get accepted into a shared flat; Sergi was able to move in that very night, while I had to wait three days, staying in an apartment I found on a popular website. Finding a place to live in Emden turned out to be really difficult, mainly because of the short two-month stay.

When we arrived in Emden, our Erasmus buddies welcomed us. We chatted for a bit and they gave us some quick tips before we each went to our homes. The next day, we attended the course presentation with the other Erasmus students: French, Portuguese, Basque, Leonese, Catalan, Chinese, and Italian. Little did we know that we would be doing everything together from that moment on. The *Orientation Weeks* began—two weeks full of local culture, excursions, parties, and cultural events. Our guides during this time were Claudius and Felix, two university students who have stayed by our side ever since and became part of our group.

We took trips to northern Emden, played scavenger hunt-style games to discover the city, visited the local art gallery showcasing an exhibition by the famous German comedian Otto Waalkes, and, of course, we discovered the local beer culture. These two weeks turned a multicultural group into a tight-knit team that did everything together—and they truly made this an unforgettable experience.

Impression of the Country

Germany is not Spain. I suppose everyone knows that, but I’ll point it out anyway. Maybe if you’re a tourist lost in the Bavarian mountains, you won’t notice the cultural difference, but if you live here for a while, you definitely will. First and foremost, there's the love and passion for cars. Most Germans adore their vehicles and take great care of them. Given the country's salaries, the cars you see on the streets are spectacular.

Secondly, the use of bicycles is widespread. Their cycling culture is much more advanced than in southern Europe. Elderly women biking with their groceries, couples riding tandems along the Ems River, and a sea of bikes in the university’s parking lot are typical scenes in Emden. Honestly, those first three days without a bike were really tough, as the public transport within the city is almost nonexistent, and I had to walk everywhere.

Finally, the schedule and rule-following. Things like no noise at home after 10 p.m. or on Sundays, mandatory bike lights at night (or face a fine), and strict adherence to traffic signals—very different from the relaxed way we treat crosswalks in Spain. On top of that, they eat lunch before 1 p.m. and don’t take siestas, making the first two weeks a bit disorienting.

Travels

If there's one thing all Erasmus students have in common, it’s the desire to explore. We literally didn’t stop traveling together, visiting cities and taking part in cultural outings. During the *Orientation Weeks*, we took a trip to the island of Norderney, located north of Emden in the Wadden Sea. Beyond that, we visited Bremen, Oldenburg, and Leer in Germany, and Groningen in the Netherlands. We also went to the Harz National Park, in the southeast of the Friesland region.

This period gave me the chance to travel nearly every weekend—sometimes pushed into it by friends, for which I'm now thankful. I can honestly say I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

Internship

For the internship, we set up a Snipe-IT server for the Medientechnik department at the university. Snipe-IT is an open-source asset management tool for tech departments. We used an LDAP server for user authentication, which pulled data from the university's main LDAP server. Beyond the technical work itself, the freedom and flexibility we had were major positives, and I found the experience highly rewarding.

The Company

The company where we did our internship was actually the Hochschule Emden-Leer itself. The university has around 455 employees, including 110 professors. Our work hours were flexible—we could work whenever and wherever we wanted, with two weekly check-in meetings with our supervisor, Menno Ternieden.

Specifically, we built an LDAP server that pulled data from the university's LDAP server and used it as the user base for the Snipe-IT service. This tool helps manage IT assets efficiently. Even though the internship wasn’t in my specific field of study, the flexibility made it a very positive experience. It also gave me the chance to dive deep into LDAP, a topic we had only lightly touched on during our degree, but which I now understand is very important and useful in the real world.