Saar Levi

First, let me thank the DAAD-Stiftung for this great opportunity, to study for a full month in Deutschland (Germany) on a scholarship. This is a dream come true, as I was taking five courses of Deutsch (German) back at my home university and have been training on Duolingo, the app, for more than eight years now. Deutsch was always an ambition for me, or a goal for life to achieve. And you made it possible for me, to take it to the next level and progress further in one intensive month. This month also included a cultural experience, which I will hopefully be able to explain on to details here in my report.

During my stay in München, I fell in love with the city and had a wonderful time exploring as much as I could have. One of the most positive things I love to talk about is the freedom to move around with the transportation in München or in Deutschland in general. In many countries, including mine, the roads are full of cars and traffic, not to mention the parking problem. So, imagine my experience feeling the quiet streets and the empty roads in a big dense city. That showed me that it is possible to minimize traffic even in big cities.

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Saar Levi likes to spend time outdoors in parks

München was also full of parks and plazas, from the English Garden to Marienplatz and much more. I loved walking between those places feeling the European culture and admiring the architecture of the buildings. I found out later that München is richer than the usual cities in Deutschland and so maybe I had luck to see and feel more than at other places.

My visit in Deutschland wasn’t only for the scholarship you provided, but also as an exchange student in TUM for the summer semester. I arrived in April and right after my school ended at the end of August, I then started my intensive course in Deutsch at the LMU. That was possible thanks to you, even though I had asked to study in Berlin at the beginning of the sign-up process. In my half a year stay I got to also spend time in Berlin and many other cities and towns in addition to my studies, especially thanks to the 9-euro ticket valid for local transportation in all of Germany that was offered from June to August.

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Visting the East Side Gallery in Berlin

About the September Deutsch course, it was really on spot to my needs. My goal was to learn Deutsch and I can say for sure, my skills got much better after having a focus class every day. I now understand some grammar in a way I didn’t before, for example, the differences between Nominative, Dative and Accusative are clearer to me. My classes had two different approaches, first studying grammar and vocabulary with tests and homework, and the second, learning how to present and talk in Deutsch. The latter was more fun and relaxed and really helped my confidence in speaking a foreign language. Unfortunately, since I am home again, I had no reason to get my new and improved German in to use. But I am sure that I will be back and so this is never truly lost.

As part of learning, we were being asked to research and present in groups about one topic. Since it was September and we were in München, we chose the obvious option for a topic, the Oktoberfest! I then learned the origin and many more interesting facts about this celebration. And of course, I got to experience this one-in-a-year fest. The feeling was amazing, even more than the Frühlingsfest, a festival to celebrate the spring season. My most favorite thing of Oktoberfest are the songs, some I even managed to learn how to sing.

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Saar Levi together with friends at the Oktoberfest in Munich

In this half a year stay in München I found a lot of new friends, mostly from foreigners in an exchange program like me, but also some locals that are born and raised in Deutschland. I have seen that most of those young local Germans were very open-minded and friendly, not like most of my country unfortunately still have in mind since World War II. Hopefully I will keep in touch with all of them. I feel now that their view of Israel is better and that they are more interested in traveling here to explore a different life than the life in Europe. Mostly the reason for such good results was my contact with them in these adjoined studies, where we all came for the same goal, learning German and meeting new friends from all over the world. They got to know my thought and feelings and I was lucky as well to hear about theirs.

Beside this half a year in Deutschland, I have already been a part in three delegations (for cultural exchange purposes) and travelled alone around the world to more than ten countries, in total a year abroad, and still, I find it not enough. There are always new experiences to go through and more things to see or learn while exploring the world, like the exciting fact that there is a whole state in Deutschland named Saarland! Imagine learning a language for so long and one day you realize there is a whole state named after you, Saarland.

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Even after more than 10 countries, Saar Levi hasn't had enough of life as a globetrotter

In short, I had a wonderful time thanks to this scholarship, my dream of living in Deutschland came true and I hope that one day I will come back there to settle for the rest of my life. This trip helped my progress in learning the language and to set the grounds for my move. Thank you once more, Dr. Gustav Winkler and to all who contributed, for this fantastic opportunity, I cannot stress this enough!