Guten Tag! My name is Natsuko Sagawa and I am currently an exchange student at Freiberg University of Mining and Technology in Germany. As well as attending lectures, I am also conducting my master’s thesis research here.
 
Freiberg is located in the state of Saxony, which is famous for Meissen tableware and Dresden. Freiberg means free mountain, and the city used to be a prosperous silver mine. As the name of the university suggests, it is known as one of the top universities in the world for the study of mining. I belong to the Institute of Ceramics, Glass and Construction Materials, and I am doing research on the durability of composite materials as part of my master’s thesis research. In the first semester, I attended lectures related to my specialty and other lectures that interested me. Since the beginning of the second semester, I have been conducting experiments in the laboratory almost every day, and conducting seminars with my professor and supervisor to advance my research.
 
At the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology, there are not only German students but also international students from various countries. However, there are only two Japanese students including myself. Before I started my study abroad, I was worried about studying in an environment with no Japanese students, but now I am truly glad that I am in this environment. One reason being is that the only time I speak Japanese is on Skype with my family once a week, and all my daily conversations are either in English or German, which has greatly improved my listening and speaking skills.
 
People in Germany and other parts of Europe live their lives with a clear separation between their work and private life. One of the things that surprised me the most when I came here was that all stores except for restaurants are closed on Sundays. No matter how big a city you go to, only the supermarkets in the train stations are open, and the shopping centers and supermarkets in the city are closed.
 
There is also a big difference in the way people work. For example, people who work at universities start work at 7:30 a.m. and finish at 4:00 p.m. Very few people work overtime. On holidays, you cannot even enter the laboratory because the university building is locked. And the average summer vacation for working people is three weeks. I was continuously amazed at the social system, which is unthinkable in Japan.
 
In such a situation, I spent my days off hiking, barbecuing, and sometimes traveling. I had a lot of opportunities to interact with nature, and it made me think that I would like to climb Mt. Fuji in the near future, even though I had never climbed a nearby mountain in Japan.
 
Living in Germany has changed the way I use my time and how I spend my days off. On weekdays, I would concentrate on my experiments until evening, and on weekends I would enjoy time with friends or by myself. I was completely captivated by this European way of living daily life during my stay there. Why don’t you try studying abroad in Europe too? Tschüss!