A beautiful intercultural experience!

Hallo Mein name ist Rashad. Ich komme aus Aserbaidschan. My first RheinAhrCampus experience goes back to October of last year when I first came to visit this University with a group of students from my home University for a 3-day-program. The reason why I mention it is because it was the first time I learned about an opportunity to spend a whole semester at this University. Prof. Borgmann and Dr. Rajah informed us about the application procedure and steps forward. I was really thrilled and excited to go back to my home country and apply for this amazing program. On the 10th of January, I was informed that I was selected to spend my semester here with financial support from Erasmus. It was really exciting news for me since I would do my internship here as well. These months I spent here made me earn lifelong friendships, great experiences, memories which would give me a smile on face in the future when I remember. The way lectures are given here at RheinAhrcampus is certainly different than the way it is at my home University in Azerbaijan. Therefore, students study more in the practical way here than we do back in my country. I had a range of good courses besides internship such as International business Simulation, International Marketing, Intercultural Communication, Toefl preparation, and a German Language class. I am really happy that I had a chance to know such great professors at this university. In IBS, we were pretty much international in the classroom as everyone was from different countries. On top of that, we have had a great project in which we simulated the real company in the class and made an initial work of game development for our partner university in Australian called the Sunshine Coast University. The game that we developed was intended to be a welfare kit for international students to overcome potential challenges in their overseas destinations. In International marketing, I got a chance to work with german students to rebrand one local product and enter the French market. We even had a day trip to France to investigate our potential and risks. Surprisingly, I also had a chance to take a TOEFL exam for free (funded by the University). I could not imagine coming to Germany, studying and living here and not learning the German language itself. Of course, it is impossible. International students will at least get a chance of learning the basics of the German language. If wanted, it is surely possible to reach an even higher level in the German language with the help of the German course. When I look back, it is hard to absorb that all these 4 months are already behind and this program is about to finish. In these 4 months, apart from all those courses I took, I was also doing my internship at Sprachen/Internationales department. I have been a teaching assistant for the IBS course and part of many projects arranged either by the department or ourselves. Being in Europe and not visiting other countries is something unimaginable for me. In this regard, I visited Belgium, France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands and some cities in Germany itself with my friend Akshay from India. At the beginning of this program, I would not expect it to be this good since I was the only student coming from my university and I did not know anyone here in Remagen. Now I can easily count many names of my friends either from Germany or outside. On top of that, I attended many parties in the neighborhood cities such as Bonn and Cologne and some dinners with Professors from Australia, India, United States, Georgia. Long story short, I can say that I made the right decision by coming to Remagen for this semester! Vielen Dank!