MIT Germany
From MISTI Wiki
This information is meant to supplement the MIT Germany Living Guide
Related wiki: Switzerland
Contents |
Before Coming
In some cases, the MIT-Germany Program can help fund your airfare. Please inquire for more information.
Getting Settled
Banking
Sparkasse is definitely the best bank for MISTI interns. Other banks, such as Volksbank or Dresdner Bank, might not issue you an ATM card if you're only going to be in Germany for 3 months. Then you can only withdraw money by going to the bank, and believe me, banks have weird hours in Germany. Basically you'll be running home from work on a Thursday so you can get to a bank before 7 PM, which is the only day they're open past around 4 PM. Sparkasse doesn't care; they'll give you an ATM card.
If you have Bank of America in the US, you can withdraw from several banks in Europe using your Bank of America debit card at the current exchange rate with no additional charges.
- Deutsche Bank (Germany, some other countries)
- BNP Paribas (France)
- Barclays (UK)
- La Caixa (Spain, mostly Catalonia)
Don't withdraw from other banks unless it's an emergency; it might cost you 5 euros per transaction.
Daily Life
Travel
By Train
The best website for looking up train timings is always http://www.bahn.de. This is true no matter what country you are traveling in--the Deutsche Bahn website has basically all of the train schedules for every country you could care about.
Buying tickets online can be a little tricky, because they need to send it to you by mail, so you need to plan in advance. The best thing to do is go to a local Bahnhof during the hours when the Reisezentrum is open. Write down exactly what you want on a piece of paper and give it to the worker there. That way you can be sure you're getting exactly the right ticket.
If you want to explore your area of Germany a little bit better, two good options are the Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket and the Länder-Ticket (I don't know why, but they usually say "Ticket" instead of "Karte"). These let you use the slower trains (everything except ICE and IC) as much as you want for one day. The Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket is only good on weekends, and the Länder-Ticket is only good within one Bundesland (Nordrhein-Westfalen or Bayern, for example). The best part is the prices are fixed, but you can have up to 5 people on a ticket. For example, the SW-ticket costs 35 euros but you can have up to 5 people on it. So if you have them all together, you get unlimited train rides for a day for only 7 euros per person. This is great for short trips, but if you want to go from Köln to München without using IC or ICE trains, it could take up to 22 hours.
Eurail is a tricky thing. Check out the different tickets on http://www.eurail.com/ and decide what is best for your travel needs. Make sure you buy before you leave the United States, because shipping it to Germany will cost extra! We found that the most cost-effective option for us was a Eurail Select Pass. We bought it early in the summer and then distributed the ten days we had among weekends we wanted to travel. It's a little expensive, but it's nice to have increased flexibility.
If you do take Eurail, it's best in Germany. You can get on any train in Germany, including ICE, without making a reservation. In France, you need to make reservations, but the trains are usually comfortable. In Spain, you will need to pay a supplement on many trains. Make sure to ask about this when you're booking your tickets at a Reisezentrum. Tell them you have Eurail. In Italy, don't bother with any train that requires a supplemental fee--the high-speed rail in Italy is not as developed as other European countries, so the high-speed trains are often only 1-2 hours faster than the local trains, which usually don't require reservations or supplements.
If you're living near Köln or west of Köln and you want to go to Paris, Amsterdam, or Brussels, check out the Thalys (http://www.thalys.com). Get on their e-mail list, because they have a lot of specials that you can take advantage of. In particular, on the first of every month they sell very cheap tickets for the remainder of the month. One time my roommate and I got first-class roundtrip tickets from Brussels to Köln for 50 euros. This is cheaper than their usual second-class rate, and we got huge seats and a delicious free dinner.
By Plane
A good flight for finding cheap airline tickets with a very intuitive user interface is http://skyscanner.net You generally want to take a flight if you're traveling any further than France, but watch out--plane tickets to Barcelona and other resort destinations can get expensive, so buy as early as possible.
Some MISTI students have had bad luck with RyanAir. It's possible to find a ticket for only one Euro before taxes, but sometimes . One example of this is Düsseldorf Weeze--Weeze is actually a small town 90 km from Düsseldorf. If you're traveling alone, it could cost you 20 euros and 2 hours on public transportation to get to this airport from Köln or Düsseldorf. That adds up to 40 euros for a round-trip. Also, RyanAir is prone to canceling flights without notice and offering little compensation for passengers. It's almost impossible to reach RyanAir by phone or e-mail or to cancel a ticket once it's purchased.
I've had good experiences on the low-cost airlines GermanWings and Hapag-Lloyd Express. -Sam Maurer '07
Hostels
One good website is http://www.hostelworld.com. Be sure to sign up to be a "Hostelworld member"--it's free, and you avoid a 75-cent service charge with each booking. Hostelworld has ratings for cleanliness, fun, security, and location, so you can pick hostels based on the parameters that you think are most important.
If you have no fear, many MISTI interns have also had good luck with http://www.couchsurfing.com/
Links
See Also
- MIT France Wiki
- MIT Italy Wiki
- MIT Spain Wiki
- Switzerland Wiki
