Lindau – where on earth is that?

When I decided to improve my German last year, I wanted to do it somewhere with a friendly atmosphere, in a place where I have a lot of leisure possibilities and in a region or city which I hadn’t yet been to.

So, I noticed this school in Lindau, Bavaria, and I suddenly started to really look forward to going there and seeing what it was like!

On my trip from Oslo to Munich I started to read up on the beautiful countryside of the south of Germany and I couldn’t wait to see all that in real.

Throughout my stay in Lindau, which is situated at Lake Constance and just on the border to Austria and a few kilometres away from Switzerland, I lived in the school’s own student residence There I had a nice room, I shared the kitchen with other students from the school, so it was really easy to socialize and get integrated in my ‘new world’. In just 8 weeks I made a lot of friends and I don’t know how I’m going to be able to visit them all!

From the student residence to the school it was just a 10 minutes walk and I enjoyed that every morning as a great way to start the day and really wake up! The school is really centrally located on the beautiful harbour of the island of Lindau! I found myself in a class with other students from all over the world. The lessons were interesting, the teachers always knew how to motivate us even when we had had a party the day before and we hadn’t really had enough sleep!

A very important reason why I liked this German course so much, was the fact that outside school there was a lot to do. The school offered a huge leisure programme and I had the chance to experience things I’d never done before. The advantage of Lindau is its location on Lake Constance at the foot of the alps. So, I did a lot of things in the mountains, on the lake or at the foot of the mountains. In September the water was still warm enough to swim or make a tour by boat to another harbour on the lake. At the same time the temperature in the evening was perfect, so we would sometimes light a fire at the lake-side and organise a fantastic barbecue with typical German sausages and, of course, German beer. We would sit there, enjoy the sunset, sing, talk and had really have fun.

Lindau itself is a small city, but you have the opportunity to reach everything really easily because of good train connections. At weekends, for example, we often went to Bregenz, which is a very beautiful town in Austria, 15 minutes away, where you can find, just as in Lindau, bars, pubs, cafes and discos. As you might know, Austria is also really famous for its mountains and that’s why I joined a trip organized by the school to the Lünersee and went on a hike to the highest mountain of the Rätikon, the Schesaplana at 2900 m, and really enjoyed the amazing views!

I was really happy to be in Lindau, but nevertheless I wanted to see Munich and the really famous ‘Oktoberfest’ , for which Munich is really well-known. So I decided to enjoy the “must have” two day trip in October to the Oktoberfest and experienced the typical Bavarian food, music and Biergarten-atmosphere. I really liked Munich, but I was happy that I chose Lindau for my language course. It was the variety I liked in Lindau. You always have the chance to go to a big city, but when do you think of going to a small town, where the lady in the supermarket knows your name after 8 weeks buying your food there!

And now I look forward to return again this autumn for a four weeks course at the school in Lindau and sitting at the end a German exam I will need for my career – exciting!

Katrine (Norway)