Mi­chel­le Ar­ta­lim's jour­ney to Ger­many is quite an in­te­res­ting story. She wan­ted to be­co­me an en­gi­neer, and in her view, there was no bet­ter place to pur­sue this dream than Ger­many. Con­se­quent­ly, she left her home­town of Sukabu­mi in In­do­ne­sia and went on her jour­ney to Kiel. After ar­ri­ving in Kiel, she was ad­mit­ted to the Stu­di­en­kol­leg pro­gram at FH Kiel, fo­cu­sing on en­gi­nee­ring. Howe­ver, here's the twist: Mi­chel­le later de­ci­ded to study mul­ti­me­dia pro­duc­tion. "I wan­ted to study en­gi­nee­ring, that's why I came to Ger­many," she says and can't help but laugh at her own story. Ne­verthe­less, she is con­vin­ced of her final de­cis­i­on, ex­plai­ning, "When I saw the cour­se cur­ri­cu­lum on the web­site, I was fa­sci­na­ted." She ap­pre­cia­tes the prac­ti­cal ap­proach of her stu­dies, sta­ting, "It suits me more."

Mi­chel­le en­coun­te­red va­rious chal­len­ges when she first ar­ri­ved in Ger­many. Fin­ding ac­com­mo­da­ti­on, for in­s­tan­ce, was a dif­fi­cult task. She re­counts, "I sent messa­ges to ne­ar­ly 100 peop­le. In­iti­al­ly, I stayed close to Frank­furt with some fri­ends, and when peop­le in Kiel of­fe­red to show me a flat, the long di­s­tan­ce was a pro­blem. I had to make a blind choice." Current­ly, she re­si­des in the Stu­den­ten­werk SH dor­mi­to­ries. Ano­ther hurd­le she had to over­co­me upon her ar­ri­val was the COVID-19 pan­de­mic. She had to un­der­go a two-week qua­ran­ti­ne, which made it dif­fi­cult to meet new peop­le. Lucki­ly, that chan­ged a lot until now.

Mi­chel­le ul­ti­ma­te­ly chose Kiel be­cau­se it was the first Stu­di­en­kol­leg that ac­cep­ted her. "Du­ring my Stu­di­en­kol­leg year, I thought about mo­ving to ano­ther city, such as Ham­burg. Howe­ver, I fell in love with Kiel," she ex­plains. She likes the city's wea­ther, de­scribing it as "not too hot and not too cold." She also en­joys being near the sea and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go swim­ming. When her stu­dies be­co­me too stress­ful, she likes to take a walk at the Kiel­li­ne and en­joys the view there. When asked if Ger­many matches her ex­pec­ta­ti­ons, she ans­wers with a "jein". Mi­chel­le re­marks, "I had heard that Ger­mans, in ge­ne­ral, are un­fri­end­ly.  Howe­ver, when I moved to Kiel they hel­ped me. I'm re­al­ly bad with di­rec­tions, and when I first ar­ri­ved, an el­d­er­ly lady as­sisted me and showed me the way. It was com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent from what I had heard."

There's one Ger­man ex­pe­ri­ence that Mi­chel­le is eager to try: "It might be too much in­for­ma­ti­on, but I've heard that the pick­les from Spree­wald are ab­so­lu­te­ly ama­zing. I want to visit Spree­wald and taste those pick­les," she shares with a laugh. "There's a Spree­wald pick­le stand in Kiel, but I'm not sure if it's au­then­tic!" Of cour­se, she has had her cul­tu­re shock mo­ment, too. "The cas­hiers at the su­per­mar­ket here are un­be­lie­vab­ly fast," she says. If Mi­chel­le Ar­ta­lim would go back in time she would still do eve­r­y­thing the same way. She re­al­ly likes her time here and she has gai­ned many in­te­res­ting ex­pe­ri­en­ces in col­le­ge and her daily life.