History at its best

Wandering through the streets of Seville
One of these alleys might lead you to your next favourite place in town…
Around every corner, you will find a new monument, nice buildings, great cafés, ice cream shops (there’s one that makes its own popsicles, it’s just great!), small clothing stores and of course a bit of touristic stuff as well (which is great if grandma asks you for another postcard or you desperately need a birthday gift for your friend).

I can’t get enough of Seville’s view…
Seville at night is great, its buildings in a shine of light and the river glittering just look mesmerizing. Partygoers or early birds will also learn to enjoy the fresh morning air, giving the city a whole other feeling as well before a really nice, sunny and mostly warm day. But after a while, you will have, more or less seen everything, It is still amazing to be able to see these buildings every day on your way to the Uni and back.

Life in Seville
So, let’s start with the what you might probably worry about most: The costs of living. What I like about Seville is that, unless you’re in the more touristic areas, the cost of living is really low. I have never enjoyed cooking so much as I do here, since it is so easy to buy fresh and cheap groceries. should you feel homesick, there’s always an ALDI or LIDL around, supplying you with pretzels and German sausages. But most of the bigger shopping centres offer some German products too. If you want to cook the more Spanish way, there is a shop for everything in Spain on every street. I buy my fresh vegetables at the market or the frutería, my bread at the panadería and if you like seafood, you can go to the pescadería as well. Not to mention the churros which you will buy at the churrería as a snack after all the hard work.
Other items like cosmetic products are more expensive than at home, but since you won’t have to buy these regularly, it actually doesn’t use up as much money as I feared at the beginning.

Public Transport
What I also find great, is the transportation system. Even if punctuality in Spain is not that important, there are always enough busses to bring you to Uni punctually, if your regular bus is running late. Seville has only one metro line, completely new, modern and clean, with metros running until 2am quite regularly. You can also rent the Sevici bikes, which funktion surprisingly well. In comparison with Cologne, transportation here is heaven. Unless you live on the outskirt areas of Seville, coming home will rarely be a problem.

Accomodation
Accomodation here is not that hard to find, not even in the city centre, especially if you speak Spanish (honestly, speaking Spanish is a huge advantage here because Spanish people rarely speak English – a great possibility to improve your language skills). It’s not easy, since everybody is searching for accommodation and you won’t stay a whole year, but I changed accommodations spontaneously during my first week here, so it’s definitely possible. I am living with two other German students and a Spanish family and it’s great to see a different culture ‘live and in colour.’ Once I got used to the more relaxed, but sometimes quite proud and ‘stubborn’ attitude of the Spanish people, which is quite different from the German mentality, I actually found the Spanish people here to be much nicer and more polite than in Germany. People here are really chatty, which I enjoy a lot. It improves my language skills and helps me get to know more people.

Uni life
So, once I finally started to settle down, the Semester began. I am not going to lie, my days during the week are usually filled with Uni, household, homework and revising. We usually have Fridays off, to have a longer weekend and be able to travel, but I for myself am totally fine with doing some Erasmus trips on Saturdays or Sundays and using the Fridays to relax or work on my projects, so I won’t have to think about them while traveling. But, luckily, classes are neither hard in regards to the English level nor the complexity of the content.

The best part of Seville
This leads me to the thing I actually love doing most here in Seville, and that’s traveling.
Seville itself doesn’t have much to offer in terms of activities (unless you like partying, the clubs here are crowded but have a very good quality and I enjoy going out once in a while, as well as to get to know new people and strengthen my social network here), but the area around Seville is full of adventures. So far, I have been to the wonderful beaches of Portugal and visited many great landscapes around the area of Seville. In the upcoming weeks, I want to visit Cadiz, a city located by the sea, only a few minutes by train away, as well as to Marocco. The weekends here are always a bit like holiday, taking me to another world, another adventure, another of Spain’s fairtytales- like history. I feel like I will have a whole lot to talk about the next months, bringing many great stories back home for Christmas.