Tina Gao, Paderborn University in Germany

Hallo, my name is Tina. I am a Chinese girl who is studying in Germany for one year's exchange now. I belong to the Accounting School of Economics Faculty of Tohoku University. This faculty-exchange-program is a first and special one between these two universities (economics faculties), with the purpose of supporting students who were affected by the big earthquake on 11th March, 2011 in Sendai - which also implies that we are receiving the scholarship of monthly 650 Euro from the Germany government. :) The quota of the exchange-students were set to be 20 in the first beginning and actually there were around 20 students who applied, so basically everyone who applied for the program could come to Paderborn.

Front of University Paderborn

The Libiary Building after the First Snow of 2011

Front of the Libiary

The Cafeteria on Campus

The Aisle Connecting the Menza (Dining Hall) and the Teaching Buildings

Yes, Paderborn. What is it and where is it? It is a small city in the Nordrhein-Westfalen bundesland (like a state or province, Germany has 16 bundeslander), where said to have the shortest river in Germany - Pader River. It is 4 hours of train-distant from Frankfurt and within the same bundesland with Köln, and Düesseldorf and Bonn, the last one was the capital of the former West-Germany during the Cold War. Paderborn is a typical Catholic city and people here believe and adhere to the rules and traditions of Catholicism devotedly. For example, most of the shops and restaurants on Sundays in Germany are closed due to the law reflecting the rules and spirit of Christianity, especially in Paderborn. Although the city is not big, the cathedrals and chapels in Paderborn are still worth a see.

One of the Churchs in PB

Inside the Cathedral of Paderborn

The Old Rathaus (City Hall) of Paderborn

The English-taught classes Uni Paderborn provided to us are mostly regarding Business Management, Economics and Finance. There are around 6 undergraduate classes and 3 graduate classes we can choose here. Besides the English-taught major classes, we also could learn German and other languages (Germen-taught) from the classes in the university wide. If you had learnt some German by yourself before coming to Germany, you would definitely have the chance and capability to listen to every class provided on campus.

Pader River - the Shortest in Germany

The student association Eurobiz of Uni Paderborn, which is just like @home in Tohoku University organizes a lot of domestic trips and weekly parties for exchange students from all over the world. The trips are very cheap because they are partly financed by the International Office of the university. We have already been to Berlin, Bremen and Dresden, Münster, Detmold, Frankfurt and Düesseldorf led by the Eurobiz guys so far and there will be a lot of trips and activities in the summer semester too.

Below are some of the photos I took during the travels, hope you could enjoy them. Happy New Year and have a good day~~ :)