I am Lucas Prezzavento, from Argentina. I am 23 years old and I study Industrial Engineering at the Buenos Aires University (UBA). During 2020, I participated in an academic exchange program at the Leibniz Universität Hannover, which was a great experience.
First of all, I would like to give my impression about Hannover. It is a very nice city, with many sights, very strategically located to travel to other cities and with vast cultural variety. I really enjoyed the afternoons walking around the Maschsee lake and its beautiful surroundings and also running across the Georgengarten. Moreover, awesome cities -such as Bremen and Hamburg- are at close-train distance and the train ticket is already included in the semester ticket, which I really took profit from. A further advantage is that Hochdeutsch –“the best German”, as Germans say- is spoken in the region of Hannover. From my point of view, winter in Hannover was quite cold, but I would say that this is a general disadvantage throughout Germany. My stay was amazing, although quite weird due to the pandemic. I arrived at Hannover with a friend of mine exactly the day after German borders were closed (mid of March 2020). Thanks to the good predisposition and flexibility of the helpers at Studentenwerk, we were immediately located in the residence at Jagerstrasse, where we stayed the whole semester.
We had online classes during the whole semester, which made it quite difficult to get to know other people. That ́s why it was great to live in a residence joining experiences with people from very different places in the world. Around June, I decided to stay one more semester in Hannover. Thankfully, I got the approval by the Uni staff, plus their invaluable help to get my visa extended. In September I took part of the intensive German course, which was a very great although demanding opportunity of getting familiar with the language. I can only recommend it. Besides, we met with other ERASMUS students during this start-of-semester period, with whom we enjoyed different plans and activities that were promoted by the International Office. Meeting with these people was really fun!
Considering the academic part of my exchange, I found the english-spoken courses offered by the Faculty of Economics very varied and interesting, with a lot more of contents related to statistics that I was used to in my home university. I ́d like to recommend specially the courses on Operations Management and related ones. I also took part in the German B1.2 course during my first semester and I feel I learned a lot more. Other programs offered by the university such as Tandem are helpful to boost a little bit your German knowledge. I have to say that I was surprised by how well the different professors adapted their courses to the online format.
The facilities offered by the university are very nice too. The libraries and study rooms are very comfortable and offer a really calm environment to study. Furthermore, the sports campus is amazing. I went a lot to the gym, which offers varied fitness equipment.
As a conclusion, not only is Hannover a great city to live in, but also an amazing destination for an academic exchange. I can only assure to any student that they wouldn ́t regret choosing Hannover to study abroad. Last but not least, I would like to give many thanks to all the International Office employees for all their help I received during my stay in Hannover without which my experience would have been totally different.
