Osnabrueck is a city of about 160,000 people located in the Niedersachsen state of Northern Germany. It’s about 2 hours away from Bremen, 3 from Hamburg, and maybe 2 from Hannover. This is the city where I will spend the next 5-6 months studying.
When Erik and I arrived in the train station, we had no clue where we were. We got a taxi and let the driver figure out where Erik’s apartment was at. October the 2nd is a German holiday, so everything was closed. I couldn’t move into my apartment until the 3rd, so I was going to crash at Erik’s that night. We were pretty tired, so we just relaxed and slept for a bit. When we woke up, met all of Erik’s roommates and his one roommate Jahn offered to take us on a tour of the city, which was perfect. He showed us around and gave me some good initial clues about where I was. He also showed us some of the better places to eat at around town.
The next day, I moved into my apartment and met my roommates. 3 people from Poland, 1 German girl, 1 guy from the Ukraine, and some others. In total, we are 8 people. I was a bit shocked at first, I’m used to dorm life and living with like 60 people… but having a smaller apartment with 8 people was not something I expected… I didn’t really have much planned for the first day, except Erik and I both had no sheets for our beds. Later that night, we met up and figured out how to get to IKEA and I spent like 90 Euro buying pillows, sheets, forks, spoons, rugs, and anything else that looked cool. IKEA is just an amazing store, which sucks because there are only like 2 located within an 8 state radius of me in America. However, I now had an apartment and a bed, what more could I want!?!