Shi Chen, a master’s student from the Graduate School of Sport Sciences went on an exchange program at the German Sport University Cologne from October 2021 to March 2022. This program was based on a bilateral collaboration agreement between the two institutions and was sponsored by the Top Global University (TGU) Program.
Please read about his experience below!
1. German Sport University Cologne
German Sport University Cologne, as known as Spoho, is one of the most famous and biggest sport universities in Europe. It’s located in Cologne, which is the fourth-biggest city in Germany and a very international city. People from Spoho are all good at speaking English, so, even if you can’t speak German, you can easily survive here only speaking English.
Spoho is also a very international university. For the exchange program, it has 65 partner universities worldwide. At Spoho you can not only meet Germans but also you can get to know people from all over the world. For me, I made friends with people from Turkey, Greece, Spain, etc.
Ⅱ. Courses
I think the most different aspect of classes between Spoho and Waseda is the practical courses. There are so many practical courses you can choose from in Spoho, from football, basketball, gymnastic and even to hockey and shooting courses. Unfortunately, baseball is not as popular of a sport in Germany, so they didn’t have a baseball course.
There are also many theoretical courses you can choose in Spoho. For theoretical courses, the lecturer will usually focus on feedback and communication with the students. Basically, after every topic and presentation, they will ask what you think about this topic. Sometimes they will ask you to discuss about these topics by group. If you want to get grade or credit points from the course, then you need to at least make one presentation by person or by group. So, in most of the courses you need to work with others to make a presentation, and what’s great is that the members from your group are from all over the world, so you can be enlightened by the perspectives or viewpoints that you may never have thought about before.
I will talk about some courses I chose, and hopefully this will help you to learn about it more.
1. Historical Aspects of the Sport For All-Movement by Stephan Wassong.
Mr. Wassong is working at IOC in Germany, so he is very knowledgeable about Olympics and IOC. The topics are about the history of Olympics, the movement of anti-doping, the structure of IOC. If you are interested in IOC and Olympics, you may like to choose this course.
2. Dark Sides of Sport by Daniel Quanz.
You can tell it from the title of the course that this course is talking about something that’s not so good in sports. In this course we made a lot of discussion and presentations about topics like anti-doping, hooliganism, match-fixing, gender discrimination and so on. If you want to learn something behind the scenes, this may be a good course for you.
3. German sport culture by Gerard King.
This course is focusing on Spoho itself and also sport in Germany. We have learned about the history of Spoho and also the sport organizations in Germany. My classmates also made presentations about 2 Olympics games held in Germany. By the way, I also made a presentation about cultural difference and chose racism as a topic in this course.
And if you are interested in studying at Spoho as a bachelor’s student, you need to know about what they call a “physical aptitude test.” As they told us, Spoho is the only university in the world that established this test. You need to pick 20 performances and pass 19 of them to pass the test. You have to pass the test before you graduate, even if your major is sport management or sport business.
Ⅲ. Life in Cologne
As I said, Cologne is the fourth largest city in Germany, so there are many activities that you can experience in Cologne.
1. Carnival
Carnival is the biggest festival in cologne. Usually it’s held on 11/11. On that day, everybody will wear fancy costumes and gather around in the street to celebrate the festival. The most important thing is you need to prepare the food and water by yourself, because it will be so crowded that you don’t have a chance to eat in restaurants.
2. Xmas market
For Christmas, there will be an Christmas market in the city center where you can buy a lot of traditional stuff. For example, they will sell traditional cups and candles. If you like beer and wine, there will also sell a lot of traditional wine. Especially the warm wine is super tasty. There is also a big skating rink inside the market that will only open on Christmas. If you’ve never tried ice skating before, you can try it here.
3. Football
If you live in Germany, you must watch at least one football game. Spoho is just right next to the stadium of FC Cologne, but it’s super hard for a non-member to get a ticket as it’s a super popular club. So we usually go to Düsseldorf (Tanaka Ao’s club) and Leverkusen to watch football games. It only takes 30 mins from the city center to the stadium.
Ⅳ. Amazing experience
If you want to practice your English, experience life in Europe and make some international friends, I think Spoho is a good place to go. Because 6 months is a very short period, I suggest you to apply for the 1 year program if it’s possible. And when you stay there, just enjoy the moment and do whatever what you want to do. I am sure it will become treasure in your life.
