Hey, I’m Alberto! I’ve been here in Cologne for more than two months and there are only about two weeks left to leave the country. Time flies!

After living in Cologne with my girlfriend for a while, I can say that, except for the bad cloudy cold weather (I love sunny days, and here they don’t have a lot of it), I love the country, or at least the places I visited (Berlin, Amsterdam [ok, not Germany, but still nice],Eltz castle, Essen, Bonn and Frankfurt).

People here are supportive if you ask for help and most of them speak English very well, which is good if you know just a couple words of German. They are nice and more patient that people in Spain. For example, when you are walking and want to cross a road, they often stop and let you pass even if you are not in a zebra crossing!

Food and rents are about the same price as they are in our country.

Bars are not as expensive as I heard and is nice to eat out. I’m vegan and there lots of options to eat there, is a paradise compared to Spain.

The city seems to be very secure, there are no fences in houses’ windows and I really like the feeling of being safe when walking in a crowded market, knowing you can be relaxed because surely no one is going to try to steal something from your backpack.

Regarding the internship itself, I was in REWE, a huge company with thousands of supermarkets, DIY home stores (something like Leroy Merlin in Spain), tourism offices, etc. I think they even have a small airline. The work was interesting. I used php, JavaScript/jQuery most of the time, and a bit of SQL, CSS and HTML too. I made a web application to it easier for the ITs to open connections between the different parts of their network.

My boss, Michael, speaks Spanish quite well. I also worked often with Vanessa, she was in charge of the project I was in and was the one who sent me new tasks. I think both, Vanessa and Michael, are nice people and always help if you ask. The rest of the colleagues were nice too, but I didn't have as much contact with them as with Michael and Vanessa. 

There was a kitchen in the office where you can make tea or coffee and the company offered a free meal every day in the canteen too. The only thing I could complain much about the company was its place in the city, it took about 50 min to commute to work, but I guess most of the big companies haven’t offices in the city center.

Hello Everybody,

I’m Jihane, and I’m an Erasmus student who had the chance to get an internship as an IT trainer in Cologne Germany this year.

My journey was very productive and rich. I learned some useful skills that can help me advance in my career and enlarge my experience.

Working in another environment helped me to start seeing everything from different perspectives and be open minded as much as I can. It is a good opportunity to get out of your comfort zone and develop both professional and personal characteristics in an interesting and a fun way.

I will try to sum up my experience in the upcoming lines:

First, I had the chance to see three cities (Cologne, Düsseldorf  & Bonn ). These cities are incredibly beautiful. There are so many places to visit; museums, castles, monuments... and much more worth to be explored. In addition, it is a good opportunity to discover the local and the street food out there. Everything seen, will help you get an idea about their culture and much fun stories to share with your friends later.

Second, i will talk about my internship in Talanx. I’ve learned more about java programming and Java Server faces. It was a great chance to see how work is done in a real project. Moreover, i learned some attitude to have when working in a professional atmosphere inside a big company as Talanx.

Fortunately, i had the chance to be mentioned in an article in Talanx web page, where they talked about practitioners that come from Spain. No need to guess so hard dear friends... it was me :D

Finally, i shouldn’t forget about German classes. I had so much fun learning this language. Even the teacher and the students were so friendly that the whole atmosphere was very funny.

Overall, it is such a good opportunity to LEARN, DISCOVER, and SEE new things and explore a completely new world. You should just keep on mind to be responsible and well organized in order to get the best of everything.

Best wishes,

Hello everyone, this is Luis writing from (Brühl) Cologne.

If you reading this, it should meant that you are thinking about coming here with an Erasmus grant. I hope you are sure about it. Don’t misunderstand me, this is great... but you have to be ready to let go lots of little things to be able to have fun and learn something valuable from your staying in a German “companz”.

That is a really common typo here. The “y” and the “z” keys are reversed. It’s really bothersome because when you get used to it and go back home / hotel / flat you have to type in your Spanish laptop.

But let’s not go astray. You may be thinking: Why should we be so sure about coming to Germany?

Yeah... If you make yourself valuable to the company, they will pay you well. Really well. If you make yourself valuable that is. They are not giving away the money just because we are pretty handsome, or because we have better skin color or some bizarre reason.

First you have to work, maybe even at something that is not initially related to Web Design / Develop. Think that they are testing your mentality too. Then there will be times when you won’t have anything to work at (yaay whatsapp time), you will have to look for something productive: learning that technology that they are using, debugging some script / JavaScript / ... or any other thing you could think of.

And last (after jumping over a long list). You have to socialize (Nope, no whatsapp). Outrageous!!! I know... I also loved being alone tanning in front of my computer screen myself. BUT!! If you don’t say a word in three months, how will they come to know you?

Anyway, it seems like there a lot of cons but no pros. THERE ARE lot of good things, but you only know of them if they really interest you. So I won’t be pointing them, go to that lovely Google and do some findings.

In the end if you don’t find anything, then think in the children. Because nobody ever think of them. But if you can't do that then:

1. Don’t build up weird expectatives.
2. Start looking for a place to live NOW. You are already late.
3. Look all the info you may want to have earlier than taking the plane. You want to have things to do, things to see, things to eat.  
4. Send mails to those that could help you. Your future mentor, friends you know in Germany, people from Campanillas that live in Cologne. You don’t know who will lend you a saving hand.
5. Keep smiling. The most important one. If you are positive you will find solutions and people will help you earlier. The Germans are not that closed or unpleasant.

That’s... that’s all my friends.

See you!! Hopefully in Germany.