Our exchange trimester in Istanbul and Shanghai

After having successfully completed our third trimester at KLU, we started with our internships directly. It was a great opportunity to gather new, important practical experience firsthand and to put the theoretical background knowledge we had acquired into practice. It is a pity that we only had a limited period of nine weeks or less for our internships, due to the fact that some of us already had their semester start at the beginning of August.

By the beginning of October, most of our fellow students had started their exchange semester at one of the various KLU partner universities. As we already mentioned in one of our previous blogs, at the moment KLU has about 31 different partner universities all over the world: from Reykjavik (Iceland) in the north, Windhoek (Namibia) in the south, Bogota (Colombia) in the west to Shanghai (China) in the east.

In the following two sections, we will tell you what we experienced during the first weeks of our exchange trimester abroad.

Ole: Semester start at Özyeğin University in Istanbul

Together with a German fellow student from the Logistics track, I decided to spend my exchange semester in Istanbul, Turkey at recently established Özyeğin University.

Istanbul is amazing: the weather still feels like summer, the people are very friendly and helpful. Around every corner, you find a small restaurant with traditional Turkish dishes or tea and shisha shops. We are staying on the Asian side of the city, close to Marmara Sea in an Erasmus flat we share with one Dutch, one Danish, and one Italian guy. A Turkish family that lived in Germany for a couple of years rents out the apartment. They are very helpful especially at the beginning. They help us find the places we need, since Istanbul is quite big (the population is around 17 million). The public transportation system in the city still is not well connected, so we use Dolmus buses. They are private, shared minibuses and you can hop on and hop off wherever you want.

My first impression of the university is positive: the campus is brand new and well-equipped with everything you need, like a free sports center with s swimming pool, different coffee shops and restaurants and plenty of study rooms. The university-organized airport pick up also helped us in the first days with the shuttle buses to campus. We had already chosen the courses we want to attend in Germany, deciding to enroll in three courses and one Turkish language course.

We have already done a lot of sightseeing around Istanbul: we’ve toured the Grand Bazaar, the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia and took a nice day trip to the Princess Islands in the Marmara Sea. I am looking forward to my next adventurous months in this lively and exciting city!

Elias: Semester start at Tongji University in Shanghai

Together with six fellow KLU students, I am spending my exchange semester at the renowned Tongji University in Shanghai, China.

We arrived here in Shanghai at the beginning of September and have already spent four weeks in the city. It is an incredibly dynamic and sparkling city that never sleeps. Around the clock, new buildings are being constructed, which is changing the cityscape of Shanghai permanently. The Siping campus of Tongji University, where we will be taking courses for the next few months, is located in the north of the city, but is very well connected to the city center by metro. The Shanghai Metro is the largest metro network in the world. Generally, it is a very fast and cheap mean of transportation to get from one place to another. Most of the international students are living in one student dormitory located directly on the Siping campus. Since the campus is very big, we decided to buy bicycles to get to our lectures more easily. Other than that, the food here in Shanghai is very tasty and inexpensive, especially the food from the street or the restaurants near the university. I have applied for the following block courses:

• Logistics and Supply Chain Management
• International Financial Management
• Information Management and eCollaboration

We have used the time here to see some interesting cities outside Shanghai. Last weekend we visited Suzhou, which is a rewarding diversion from Shanghai. It is famous for its charming temples, gardens, and canals. Suzhou is also known as the “Venice of the East.” Besides Suzhou, we took a day trip to Hangzhou. There, West Lake and the Yué Fei temple with a statue of Sakyamuni Buddha, which is around 25 meters high, were especially fascinating and impressive.

Ole & Elias

Master in Management 2012-2013
Kuehne Logistics University