of Jannis

소Hello, my name is Jannis Wenk and I am an exchange student from Technical University of Berlin/Germany. I study environmental engineering and also in Korea my location is the Department is the School of Environmental Science and Engineering. For my one year stay in Korea I am a member of Prof. Chang’s lab. My research field is biodegradation of organic pollutants.
Meanwhile I am here for eight month; and although the live of a foreigner sometimes is hard in Korea I like it here.
The most asked question from Koreans is always about their food. Indeed the taste and ingredients of the Korean cuisine are very strange for European people. Particularly in the first weeks I had some very spicy surprises but after some time I became used to it and now I enjoy almost everything.
Besides contrasting eating habits first of all students life in Pohang is much different to the life of a student in Berlin. The Technical University of Berlin is the largest and oldest technical university in Germany what means that apart the campus several facilities are spread over the city. Additionally students are allowed to visit lectures of both other large universities. Here in Pohang I experienced the first time a real campus university with a gymnasium, book shop, convenience store, a barber shop, and so on. Principally a student never has to leave the campus. It is always a short way to the lectures whereas in Berlin a bicycle sometimes is useful to reach your next lecture in time.
Furthermore I never lived in a dormitory before. Even though there are dorms, German students prefer to live in their own flat or share the flat with other students usually not in the area of the university.
In Postech I was very impressed about all the good facilities. The buildings are quite modern. The campus is very tidy and also in the laboratory there is nothing one would miss. Furthermore there is an easy access to books and scientific papers. The back draw of the tuition free German universities is that students have to pay for many things by themselves. In concert with the short ways and the preferences of a campus university Postech is a perfect place to study without any distraction and I enjoy this a lot. On the other hand due to the remote location of the university it is hard to experience other aspects of Korean way of living.
However in my leisure time I tried to be active and traveled a little bit in Korea. In my second month here I made a four day tour to Gyeongju and Busan which was a real adventure. In retrospect everything seemed to be easy but at that time I hardly spoke Korean. I found out about the well organized bus system, managed to take a taxi to a desired destination and did not starve. Although from time to time I did not knew what kind of food I had ordered. Gyeongju as an old cultural city I liked very much. First I visited the tombs and Anabji but most remarkable for me were Bulguksa and Seokguram. In Bulguksa I had the first impression of one popular pastime of couples in Korea. Well equipped with a camera and in adequate clothes they like to take nice couple pictures. The second part of my travel I went to Busan. A little bit of the flair of that city I knew already by the movie 친구. In the evening I visited crowded Nampodong with all its booths, shops and drinking places. The next day Jakalchi fish market was on my program. After strolling around wondering about the great choice of seafood I felt hungry and had one of the best fishes of my life. While I was eating thoughtful old fishermen sat in that restaurant enjoying a bottle of soju. Unfortunately in the early afternoon it started to rain so I could not do any sightseeing and went to a hot spa.
On the next day I went back to Pohang with the good feeling that my first voyage in Korea was a success. I lost my anxiousness to travel alone in a foreign country. Korea however is a remarkable safe country. Nobody has to be afraid that someone might steal something. Almost all people I met are very helpful. Noteworthy is the respect for the elders. I bet that every foreigner firstly uses the reserved places for the elders in the subway until he realizes that he should not sit there.
My second longer journey brought me to Seoul where I stood several days. Besides visiting palaces, art galleries, shopping malls and enjoying leisure activities of young Koreans like board game bang, worth mentioning was my trip to the demilitarized zone. I have to bring up that I grew up only ten kilometers away from the inner-German border. So when I went to the DMZ I had the same strange feelings which I had as child when I saw the border dividing our country. Nevertheless history showed that the reunification was possible in Germany and so I hope that one day a peaceful solution for the Korean peninsula is found.
Compared to Germany a minute amount of foreigners live in Korea. That is why especially children like to joke with me. When I enter a restaurant I often attract attention because I am the only foreigner there. Korean people are always friendly but at the same time a little bit suspicious of me. This changes if people realize that I speak a little bit Korean or if someone introduces us to each other. Generally it is hard to find good friends for the reason that always a certain distance is kept. Besides fore mentioned reasons I am afraid that it is mostly a language problem. I have never been in a country which was so crazy about learning English. Bookstores are full of every kind of English help imaginable. But on the other hand people are so afraid of speaking. Since I studied Korean I know how deeply different English and Korean are. For me it is sometimes impossible to say the easiest things in Korean. Although I know all vocabulary necessary my sentence is completely nonsense. Several times school children asked me some question on English on the street because they are taught by native speaking teachers and it was nice to see how glad they are that they could have a small conversation on English.
Hopefully those children will it have more easy to learn English.

All these stories are just small impressions of a European in Korea. I hope many Koreans will read that article to have an imagination how foreign people might experience their country. To sum it up , I can say that I love trying to understand Korean culture but this task is nearly impossible. In many cases I can just be very astonished. I am very thankful to study science and engineering in Korea and enlarge my cultural knowledge at the same time. Hopefully in my future profession I can combine these skills in the best way possible.