We (Yan­nik, Chris­toph and Jan-Luka) star­ted our dual stu­dies at TecAlliance in Sep­tem­ber. Yan­nik and Chris­toph are stu­dy­ing Busi­ness In­for­ma­tics with a spe­cia­liz­a­ti­on in Soft­ware En­gi­nee­ring and I am also stu­dy­ing Busi­ness In­for­ma­tics, but with a spe­cia­liz­a­ti­on in Sa­les & Con­sul­ting. At the end of No­vem­ber we star­ted our first theo­ry pha­se at the DHBW Lör­rach.

The housing si­tua­ti­on in the Lör­rach area is qui­te pro­ble­ma­tic be­cau­se of the clo­se di­stance to Switz­er­land (it is about 5 km to Ba­sel). Ac­cord­in­gly, li­ving space is ex­pen­si­ve here. The who­le thing is made even more dif­fi­cult by the fact that Lör­rach its­elf is not a par­ti­cu­lar­ly lar­ge city and the student’s housing is very li­mi­ted any­way.

On our first day at DHBW we were wel­co­med by the head of the cour­se and our fu­ture lec­tu­rer. We have dis­cus­sed all kinds of or­ga­ni­sa­tio­nal mat­ters, e. g. how it works with our credit points, when we have to wri­te which prac­ti­cal work and much more. Af­ter­wards we were di­vi­ded into the dif­fe­rent cour­ses and stu­dents from hig­her se­mes­ters told us what the ever­y­day life at the uni­ver­si­ty re­al­ly loo­ks like and what we have to pre­pa­re for. We also had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cla­ri­fy open ques­ti­ons.

Af­ter this short in­tro­duc­tion our first day was al­rea­dy over. In the fol­lowing days we have al­rea­dy at­ten­ded our cour­ses. My first cour­se was about de­cisi­on theo­ry and de­cisi­on ma­king with the help of uti­li­ty ana­ly­sis. Yan­nik and Chris­toph star­ted with the law cour­se.

Due to its size, Lör­rach does not of­fer many pos­si­bi­li­ties for free-time ac­ti­vi­ties, but the­re are – as we have been told – some good bars. The big­ger ci­ties, which are here in the sur­roun­ding area; e. g. Ba­sel or Mul­house (Fran­ce) are espe­cial­ly worth see­ing at Christ­mas time.

Our sche­du­les look very re­la­xed so far, and it hap­pens that we only have a few cour­ses in one week. Our mo­du­les are qui­te si­mi­lar so far, e. g. we have the fol­lowing cour­ses: Law, Ma­the­ma­tics, In­tro­duc­tion to Busi­ness In­for­ma­tics and In­tro­duc­tion to ope­ra­tio­nal Eco­no­mics.

All in all, we like it down here in the south qui­te well and we are ge­ne­ral­ly sa­tis­fied with the uni­ver­si­ty and our pro­fes­sors. Howe­ver, we are all loo­king for­ward to spen­ding our ho­li­day and Christ­mas with our fa­mi­lies at home.