Have you got a KARIBU Buddy?

You can get a local Cologne student to be your buddy with the Karibu program. Your Karibu buddy will help answer your questions, practice your German, show you the city and generally get settled in.

https://www.facebook.com/KaribuKoeln?fref=ts

ERASMUS Cologne: a group for arranging and finding out about trips, meet ups, pub crawls and events:

https://www.facebook.com/erasmus.esnkoln?fref=ts

Most students have found their best option is to keep their old phone and switch to a new pay as you go German SIM card to save money.

Popular German sim options include:

Blau.de and LIDL pay as you go sim cards

Where to find them?

Blau are available from the Mediamarkt or Blau shops, Lidl sim cards available from any Lidl store or you can order both online from their websites.

Both companies show your balance online and allow you to select different packages or offers online, you can also top up online. The drawback is that if you do not have a German bank account you can’t top up online. With blau.de you can top up at most kiosks which are easy to find, with Lidl you can only top up at Lidl stores if you can’t top up online which can be annoying.

You are assigned a mentor at random in the first week duing the Cologne resources project. International exchange and permanent KISD students will be mixed together. The aim is to keep the same mentor and mentoring group for your entire time at KISD so that you develop a bond, get to know each other and each others work. You will be able to ask your mentor for help and guidance concerning your learning objectives, documentation, portfolio or other work-related concerns. You will also recieve critique and shared feedback from your mentoring group.

The first official week of term begins in October but there is a short one week project mandatory for all new KISD students which begins in the last week of September each year.

This project is called ‘Cologne Resources’ and aims to introduce the students to each other, the school and its philosophy. All incoming students will be divided into groups of roughly 10 people, each group will be assigned a tutor who will give them their project topic and brief for the week. The tutor and group you are assigned will be your mentoring tutor and mentoring group for the rest of your time at KISD. The week will conclude with a presentation of your groups project results to the whole school.

As an exchange student you will have the opportunity to partake in an extra two week short project only with new international masters and new exchange students during September. This project changes each year, but starts with a broad topic related to Cologne culture in some way which encourages you to get to know the other new students whilst conducting research in the streets of Cologne and getting to know the city a bit more. This project is worth 3 credit points.