Since Gutenberg, Mainz produces good impressions. (For Sabine Klebig <sabine.klebig[at]wiwi.fh-mainz.de> )
If someone had asked me some months ago how my life was going to be, I would certainly had given him a completely wrong answer. In Argentina is quite uncommon to study abroad, and it wasn’t an easy task to explain my friends and other Argentinians why did I choose to live in Germany to study “the same” discipline. Now, since the first semester is over, I started to see that it will be even harder to express with words how peculiar my life was truly going, but I will try to start telling from the beginning…
When I was a sweet little kid, my grandmother told me stories about inter-continental cruises over floating palaces, which took months to reach some remote destination port. Since those times, curiosity towards other places and cultures motivated many of my expeditions, but none of those adventures was as challenging as studying and living in Germany for such a long period of time. The existence of agreements between the Universidad de Ciencias Empresariales y Sociales (UCES)[1] and the Fachhochschule Mainz[2] substantially simplified the bureaucratic procedures needed to study abroad. After some interviews with Leandro Goro (from UCES) and Professor Doctor Ulrich Schüle (from Fachhochschule Mainz) I crystallized my will to get into this venture. I also contacted the Fachhochschule’s International Office staff (mainly Ulla and Sabine) and they were always there to help me on dealing with minor (but not less important) details and requirements. After so many preparations, I was ready to face the challenge. I was looking for something different, and that is exactly what I found.
Germany is much more than exquisite beer and pretzels. During this semester, I had the chance to love this special people, their cuisine, their country and (last but not least), their language. The first early months I was living in a Students residence at Gonsenheim. It wasn’t effortless at the beginning, because I haven’t got any friends there, but a couple of days after, I started to get in contact with very interesting nearby residents while cooking together and sharing our meals in the kitchen. The university was still on holidays, so the courses hadn’t started, but meanwhile I took the first of many German language courses I wanted to attend. My German language was far away from the academic level, but the constant interaction with affable students was helping me considerably. I was also attending to CafeLingua Thursday meetings with Janko, Chris, Florian and many others, having lots of fun while exercising different languages.
The first day at the Fachhochschule Mainz, the first great challenge: getting into the courses on time. This was one of the most difficult things to achieve. I had to precisely measure how much time did it take to walk from Gonsenheim to the FH (12 minutes). After that, I was able to get on time most of times. The academic agenda started to get crowded as soon as everyone came back from holidays. Time was a very scarce resource, and I hadn’t time to get back to my room, cook, eat and get in the next “unterricht” on time, so I had to eat at the “Mensa” on those busy days. The Mensa staff is very friendly and I quickly got used to Magrite’s daily smile. She was also very fast on detecting my nutrition patterns, and as soon as the line let me stay in front of her, she was asking me if I would like to eat “fleisch?” (meat), knowing that my answer will be always be the same; “Ja”. After eating, I used to have a little midday nappy (Argentine “siesta”) beside the fish-pond at the FH’s playground, and then I was ready for action again.
Courses were amusing, and I felt very lucky because in two of them (Cross-Cultural Management and Strategic Management II) we developed investigations and presentations in very heterogeneous groups. It was delightful to share so many afternoons with them, and we were able to know each other closely. I didn’t have much experience on giving slides presentations, and I learned a lot from these singular colleagues.
Along the Strategic Management II course we were able to directly work with real-life companies to help them to develop new strategies. This course was very exigent on time requirements, because our group used to meet one or two times during the week. While we were adding our analysis find outs to presentations, we had the chance to discuss our points of view, and identify different combinations of problems and solution approaches.
One of the most delightful courses was the one dedicated to the European Integration. This course gave me the chance to look at Europe from an European perspective, examining the European Union foundations, taking a profound look to the political and economic processes it went through until today. This overall view conceded a distinctive sight on European Union past, present and future. Now I can understand many aspects that explain how does the “union in diversity” works, and how it impacts in business and European citizens.
Living in Germany let me abolish any kind of preconceived opinion that could had arisen from Hansel and Gretel or other Grimm’s brothers tales[3]. I was daily discovering new people and different ways of greeting them (I wasn’t able to embrace or even kiss as wide and openly as I used to do it in Buenos Aires). Greeting was a very interesting thing to take into consideration, because each individual had its personal preferences. I was surprised to see that other German students were infected with Argentinian hugs “Umarmung”, and kisses “Küsse”, and this behavior was making me feel at home when arriving to meetings or international barbecue parties.
I also learnt to grill in the German way, because not much time ago, I was used to the Argentinian “asados”. In Germany, the meat is cut in a different way than we use to do in Argentina, they use to grill much more sausages and even the coal is different. Since coal is compacted, I had to use a hair dryer to start the fire, with spectacular fireworks-like results. My affinity to Argentinian meat was progressively replaced by sausages and a special type of mixture between flour and potatoes denominated “Kartoffelknödel”. This exquisite combination, can be eaten with soft sauce and cheese. Together with these charmful alternatives, we used to prepare an innumerable variety of salads, quite often with cucumber “Gurke” and sauce. Nutrition wasn’t an issue, and I enjoyed each mouthful. I love to learn new ways to do everyday activities, as cooking and studying; this mixture between academic duties and leisure pastimes were the perfect environment to energize my hunger for knowledge.
Mainz is a much more than proper place to come along your studies. It’s crowded by students, and many of them come from different and remote places all around the globe. Beside this, I was the only Argentine within many kilometers around. This single fact enforced me to accelerate my integration process, and I was glad to accompany Asta students in their fascinating proposals, like the wine tasting in Ingelheim, trips to visit Heidelberg and many other cities. Soon I found myself reading books while enjoying the sun in the the side of the river Rhine or having boundless bicycle journeys. In summer, I discovered some spots with sand, creating an artificial but attractive beach to share with friends.
This was also a singular opportunity to visit other states and countries, and I was glad to do it by myself or sharing those trips surrounded by fellows who stay close to my heart. Together or alone, we stepped in many cities and countries, resulting in a much richer European cognizance. These unusual paths were plenty of funny and tragicomic episodes that could perfectly occur to any novel character, and they acquired a major relief when you comprehend that they are happening to you.
In a nutshell, this flourishing occurrence was quite exigent in terms of personal resources. It was crucial to have an open-minded attitude, flexibility to adapt to changes and circumstances, and the ability to communicate even when the known vocabulary was insufficient or inadequate. It wasn’t difficult with the support of many outstanding beings from whom I acquired varied and profuse experience. They gave me the chance to enter into their lives, and they changed me for good and forever. I’m not going to name each one, because they already know how important they are. For all of them, my deepest gratefulness.
During my stay in Germany, I was writing a blog[4] in my personal web page. Those who may be interested in knowing which were my quotidian notes and quotations, are invited to read it (it’s in Spanish). Please, feel free to contact me; feedback is always welcome.
Federico Ponce de León
[1] http://www.uces.edu.ar/
[2] http://www.fh-mainz.de/
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_Grimm
[4] http://www.fefu.com.ar/