And how are things in Linz?
When you think about Austria, not many people would think about Linz. Still, it is the third biggest city in Austria, besides Vienna end Graz. Linz has about the same amount of inhabitants as Eindhoven, although it feels a lot more quiet here. Thereby, there are not many tourists here, but after all Linz is mainly an industry city.
Furthermore, Linz is centrally located. Vienna, Salzburg, Graz, Munich, Bratislava, Prague and Budapest are easily reachable. Linz is also known for the composer Anton Bruckner, the mathematician Johannes Kepler and Linz is on the World Heritage List of UNESCO of Media Arts.
Although I just arrived three weeks ago in Linz, I completely feel myself at home. Most of the exchange students live in a big students flat, just a 10 minutes’ walk away from the university. It is nice to live in this students’ flat with most of the exchange students. Besides that, the Erasmus Students Network (ESN) is very active. We already explored the city while making a big variety of exercises and off course we ate a Wiener schnitzel. We also ate bread with ‘leberkäse’, probably most people don’t know what that is. Of course we tried the Linzer torte as well, Austria is well known for their wide variety of cakes. Furthermore, the university arranged several excursions, for instance a day trip to the concentration camp Mauthausen and the typical Austrian village Steyr.
The first three weeks really felt like a kind of introduction weeks, since the classes start next week. With all the trips, that I have mentioned before, a German language course and a cultural sensitivity training, which is currently still going on. What I also really like here, is the Mensa at the university campus. For a couple of euros, you get a nice warm meal.
Linz is an industry city, but is also very green. The city is split up by the Danube. When the weather is nice, it is lovely to go up to the Pöstlingberg to just enjoy the view over the complete city. Furthermore, the Pleschinger lake is just a 10 minutes’ walk away from the dormitory, which is nice to just be outside for a while.
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