hello everyone and welcome back to my channel if you're new around here my name is sarah and
last year i studied abroad in berlin germany as an exchange student and i did
actually make a video a couple of years ago about things i like about bath my home university city
and people did seem to find it useful i also made one about things that i don't like so much about
bath so i thought that i would actually make a couple of similar videos for berlin since i
did study there for a semester i unfortunately didn't actually spend that much time physically
there because of covid it was a real nightmare getting there from the uk during those dark times
but i did learn quite a lot about what it's like and i'd like to share that with you guys today so
yeah i hope you enjoy it and find it useful if you're thinking of studying in berlin or
if you're about to start studying in berlin and let's get into it so i guess a lot of these things
will sort of be indirect comparisons between my experience studying in the uk versus in germany
and this first one is an example of that so i would say that in germany there's a lot more
of a culture of respecting students i feel as though in germany students are in general taken
a lot more seriously than here in the uk i mean yes students are taken seriously in some contexts
but i just feel as though the general public here in the uk yes most of them are you know friendly
and civil towards students but in certain situations students really aren't respected
the biggest thing that springs to mind really is for example bus drivers i just think that
bus drivers in germany i don't know they're just nicer to students like i did live in a very
obvious you know student accommodation and everyone who used the bus stop next to it
pretty much was a student and yeah they were nice to us and i just feel as though in the uk
bus drivers i mean some of them are nice and stuff but a lot of them just sort of like it's very
clear that they don't like students i've just seen so many cases for example and this has happened
to me as well they just literally drive past you even if the bus isn't full for example and
i just feel as though that wouldn't happen in germany i mean maybe that's just me
being fortunate that it never did happen to me in germany but yeah just things like that i just
think that to me it's clear that yeah students are liked more by society in general in germany
yeah that's just my perception i also really love how in germany everything is so green and fresh
like okay in the center right in the center it's not fine but i mean sort of just you only need to
go slightly further out and things just feel a lot less polluted whereas in london for example
yeah as much as i like london everything does kind of to an extent feel kind of gross and
noisy and polluted and you have to go really really far out in order for that
not to be the case i think i mean i grew up in london so yeah just from my experience in berlin
there's just so much more greenery there are loads of 'Naturschutzgebiets' you know protected areas
for nature you know and yeah i just feel as though they do take conservation more seriously in berlin
than they do for example in london yeah please don't come at me if you're from london but yeah
i just as someone who's experienced both i just feel as though that is the case that berlin wins
on that as well another thing is that when i did tell people that i was going to go to berlin for
my exchange semester a lot of people did say to me sarah you're not going to be able to practice
your german whatsoever everyone there speaks english english is a default language it might
be in the centre of berlin but once you go further out it's not people do speak german to you if you
start the conversation in german and yeah that was my experience living in Steglitz-zehlendorf that is one
of the sort of outer boroughs of berlin so yeah i do recommend if you do want to practice your
german and if you do want to live in a slightly cheaper area to live definitely consider one of
the boroughs on the outskirts because you probably will have a much more positive experience in terms
of that i've already discussed this a couple of times on my channel but i do just really like how
the Semesterbeitrag what you pay as a sort of enrolment fee for the semester at university
in berlin it does include a semester ticket which includes the whole of the berlin transport system
pretty much um yeah i just love how you can use it on the bus U-Bahn the S-Bahn the ferry the tram
yeah there's just so many forms of transport you can use it on just so seamlessly and yeah there's
just nothing quite like that in any uk city as far as i'm aware so yeah that is a definite
plus of studying in berlin that the transport system might feel overwhelming but actually
it's really not once you get used to it and just in terms of buying tickets and stuff thanks to the
semester ticket it's just it couldn't be easier this is quite an obvious one but berlin is just
such a significant city in terms of history in so many ways and chances are that if you're a
humanities student you will probably be living in the city that you're studying about at least
yeah there's a high chance that you would be i literally took two modules during my semester at
f u berlin just completely dedicated to berlin and its culture and history i just thought that
it was so cool that i was literally living in the city that i was studying so much about
i've already touched upon this but berlin is comparatively a very cheap city to live in
as capital cities go um at least sort of in western europe and yeah even the centre of berlin
is considerably cheaper to live in generally than for example the center of london center of paris
the center of rome i would say if you want to have a good time if you want to experience a capital
city then definitely consider berlin if you're a student so yeah berlin is generally quite a cheap
place in terms of costs of living at least yeah at the time of filming another comparison with london
is that unlike london if you're studying in berlin you are never far from the countryside if you
go at the shard for example in london you might just be able to see in the extremely far distance
some kind of field in berlin it's just you only need to go on a train for about 20 minutes and
it will start looking a lot greener you know um and yeah it's just not like that in london and
yeah again it's it's just berlin's got everything it a capital city but it's got you know the
countryside as well just not too far away at all so yeah i really don't want this video to
come across as slagging off london because i love london i was born there but um yeah i just yeah
i just do really think that berlin does better in some things and yeah this is a couple of them
berlin is just so close as well to so many other completely different places um i guess that is
what comes with being a country that borders so many other countries but yeah for example
i did make a vlog about this and i talk about this so much on my channel but the fact that i did
literally walk to poland um from getting the train to frankfurt an der order which is
about 40 kilometers east of berlin um yeah i just think that was so cool as a brit you know
an islander i just think that's so cool being able to walk to another country so i will probably
never stop talking about this but yeah that's another positive of berlin you're just so close to
other cities as well as berlin itself and potsdam for example it's literally in the same transport
network as berlin like you can literally get there in less than an hour from the center of berlin
so yeah i also found in berlin that it's so easy to meet people i just really liked how my
accommodation did include people from universities all over berlin not just my university and people
from all sorts of courses loads of different countries and yeah there's always some kind of
meetup going on people were so friendly i just felt at home straight away even though i missed half of
the semester by the time i actually arrived in berlin and once you meet people you meet people
they know and then yeah just your network suddenly starts building a lot and yeah i just found it so
easy to meet people in berlin even though it was during sort of covid times it was sort of during
the summer of 2021 and i didn't join any societies or things like that but yeah i still did find it
relatively easy to meet new people so yeah and this is especially a plus for international
students like i was but berlin schönefeld airport is pretty close to the center you can
get a bus there and it goes directly there i think you can also get s-bahn trains there um i think
you can i just happened to travel home on a day when the S-Bahn drivers were striking but yeah even
though you know transport strikes happened there is always a way to get there and yeah the buses
were still running so yeah the berlin airport is very accessible and that's another thing i like
about berlin so yeah i hope that you found this video useful of course this is only a snapshot of
the good things about studying in berlin because i didn't get to fully experience it due to covid
and none of my lessons for example were actually in person they were all online so i didn't... i only
went to campus a handful of times but yeah i still really enjoyed my time in berlin and
i'm sure that had it not been for covid it probably would have been you know an even
better experience but oh well i'm just glad that i managed to do it you know and yeah i did actually
make another very similar video about differences between studying in the uk compared to in germany
so yeah if you're a uk student i would definitely recommend you check it out or i don't know if
you're just curious about those differences and yeah i will link it down below and up here
and yeah please give this video a thumbs up if you did find it useful and subscribe if
you haven't done already down below and i hope to see you in another video very soon ciao for now