Week 1 at Bochum

Finally I had arrived Bochum after 19 hours long journey.(17hours + 2hours train)

P.S:Tell you something a lot of airport staffs mistook I’m from Taiwan.

This is the long distance train in Germany,they call it ICE.

Firstly I will like to say thanks for Kevin’s mother (Kevin is 1 of my teammates), she had pick me up from Bochum train station to my accommodation, and prepared some bread and drinks for me.

Life at Bochum:

This was my first meal in Bochum.

I had wake up at next day 9am, after that I had spend 1 hours to walk around and get know the environment (like found the market, bus-stop).But after that i found problems.The biggest problem I had faced was there is no internet and phone in my accommodation, so I need to live 3 days without contact the world (because the Easter holiday).OMG…Luckily Kevin saved me haha, his bro-in-law and him binged me to Bochum Hbf which was the city side of Bochum, to help me got my hand phone card (ya btw tell you in Germany the public phone was very expensive).

The black 1 is Kevin and white 1 is his bro-in-law


Now let me intro my new home to you

This was my new home at Bochum,it was student apartment for all the student call Erlenkamp, and I was shared same unit with Alex.


This was my room(it reall very empty)


Ya also show you something, this was my student card, i can take it to do a lot of thing such as taking bus train,wash cloths,buy food etc.

These were student who from the project team Armin(Team master) in dark blue and Michael in yellow(both of them were come from east Germany).They helped me a lot during the first few days. I got my Internet, bank account, student card with their help.Thanks(and also Sanda she helped me a lot)…

Michael invited me to go his home and having dinner at Thursday, and I drink my first beer in my life at his home

It was my first beer but Armin told me that was just a start and he said i will love it after 4 months.haha "prost" for my first beer("prost" means cheers)

The two drunkards


Michael and me


The two drunkards became two chef?


This was what they cook(all vegetable no meatsad......)


K It was cold in the morning.MIss you

These were my daily meals:

Breakfast—720am

I ate bread or toast for breakfast as it was cheap and easy

Price:1.5€ to 2€

lunch 12pm

I ate lunch in my school canteen, because the canteen only provide hot food from 11am to 2pm.\

Price:: 2.5€ to 4€

Dinner-7pm

I ate dinner at home and normally I will cook myself as it was much cheaper

P.S: I’m learning how to cook spaghetti

Price: ????

Study at Bochum:

My first day to school by foot. The two funny guys bring me to school through forest(there were many forest in Bochum).

This was my school Hochschule Bochu-BochumUniversity of Applied Sciences, and from my accommodation it took about 20mins by foot .Meanwhile was a Uni-Center near to University where I can eating, shopping etc.

Front view of school


Uni-centre


School canteen

Multi-purpose hall


school buliding


Electrical Room for solar project

project room1(i sat near the door side)


project room2


mechanical room for solar project

Me and old solar car-"Solar World No. 1"

I had meet most of the team members in this week as a lot of them were finish their theory study and had spend full time in this project.The whole team were in three groups:electrical group,mechanical group and strategy group.I was in the electrical group.So for me to understand more about the project I had ask many teammates from different groups(even though their English different from us but they all tried their best to explain to me).
So now let me explain to you: the body of the solar car was made by carbon fiber as it was very light and strong; then for the wheel parts they use carbon fiber for the trailing wheel and aluminum for the front wheel, that's because they put motor in the front wheel so they use aluminum to make the front wheel to support it;for the solar cells they used GaAs triple junction solar cell, it works at 29% efficiency, and the solar cell was very expensive.My first task was to clean the solar cell.First i need to desoldering the old contact wire from the solar cells, after that i need to check the condition of the cells and record down, meanwhile i also need to clean the surface of the solar cells.


I was doing desoldering in mechanical room.Ya that's something we learned from EEPS lesson.Do yoy still remember?


Do you know how much is the solar cells i holding?It cost US$100 per small piece.So i'm holing US$2200.haha

Things I had experience:

~All the shops open till 20:00, and close on Sunday and Public holiday, so better to prepare food before holidays

~ Germany people are very polite,when they see each other in school they will say "Hi" or "Guten Morgen", and when they leave they will say"Tschüss"

~Germany people like to write 1

~Germany people like to have their own pets like dogs or cats

~Germany students like to using ICQ, so if you are plan to come here to study, it’s better for you to have it, then you can contact with the student well

Ya baby that's all for my first week at Bochum, if you have any question to ask me, you can just leave a comment for me.
Enjoy your weekend bye--Tschus