Stay abroad in Calgary (Canada) 2000/2001

One year full of adventures

English as a language has been one of my hobbies ever since my school days. Even when I started my university studies, I was still very interested in the language, so I decided to take English as minor subject. One of the consequences of attending English classes and participating in language activities was that my interest in a foreign student exchange became stronger and stronger, so that in February 1999 I finally applied for a so-called traineeship (practicum) in an English speaking country at the AIESEC student exchange organization. More than a year later, on April 5th 2000, my adventure as an exchange student in the Canadian city of Calgary began.

With the necessary help of the AIESEC local committees in Oldenburg and Calgary, a job for my traineeship had been found: a company called Radss Technologies in Calgary was looking for a software engineer who wanted to start working in Calgary as soon as possible for one entire year, and as it turned out, the job description neatly met all my qualifications. So it could not have come any better for me, but there was still one question to be answered: Where the heck is Calgary?

The city of Calgary is located in the mid-west of Canada in the province of Alberta. Today, Calgary has approximately one million inhabitants. The city evolved from some kind of police station which was erected in 1875 near the Bow River. When oil was found some 60 km southwest of Calgary in 1914, the city started to develop at a more rapid speed. In the last decades, Calgary has become one of the most important centers of the Canadian petrochemical industry: four fifth of all Canadian companies that are engaged in the oil and gas business have their headquarters in Calgary. In the year 1988, the city organized the 15th Olympic Winter Games. The most important annual event in Calgary is the so-called Calgary Stampede, one of the largest rodeo and cowboy shows in the world, which takes place at the beginning of July every year.

My first days in Calgary at the beginning of April 2000 where very enjoyable. At the airport, I was heartily welcomed by many members of AIESEC Calgary's local committee, and since my traineeship started only in the middle of April, I still had a couple of days to acclimatize, to get rid of all necessary formalities, and to get to know my new room-mates and the city. During this time, also the first friendships developed, of which some have lasted until today.

With the beginning of my traineeship, regularity came back into my life: working 40 hours per week, meeting up with friends at night, doing some kind of sports on the weekends - my time schedule was very similar to the one in my German life. Regarding perception however, everything was different: different faces, different language, different food, different city, different sports etc. This list could go on like that for ever. What preoccupied me most at the beginning was predominantly the English language: of course I could speak English reasonably well, but my knowledge was very much restricted to the simple communication with other people. Regarding my professional English that I had to use at work to be able to communicate with my co-workers, there was a significant backlog, and it took me several weeks to feel - from a linguistical point of view - as comfortable at work as I felt at home with my friends.

In the following months of my traineeship, two things aside from language and my work as a software engineer ruled my life as an exchange student: the many different nationalities of the other trainees and my friends and the opportunity to travel. Even though I did not have so much time for other activities than working, I quickly figured out that my exchange was not only about getting professional work experience. It was also about getting to know and understanding people from other countries. Aside from Canadians, I got to know many people from all parts of the world that year, e. g. from Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, France, Chile, Colombia, Hungary, India, China and Brazil. Also this list could go on like that for ever. One can imagine, how fascinating it was to meet in such multicultural groups. I think, I have never watched so few TV in my entire life. :-)

Traveling is a topic for itself: in the 15 months of being away from Germany, I tried hard to visit as many places in North America as possible. With only 15 weekdays off of work per year, this was not as easy as it seemed, but there were still many national holidays to take advantage of. ;-) It all began with a trip to Ottawa for Canada Day (July 1). With four people in a small car, we managed to get the 3200 km behind us in almost 40 hours; after two nights of partying and a 40-hour stopover in Ottawa, it was time for us to go back home again; on the way back to Calgary, we were very fortunate to be able to visit Niagara Falls and Mount Rushmore.

During the second trip in October 2002, some friends from Germany and I went by car from Calgary to Lake Louise, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle and Portland and then finally to San Francisco. In the bigger cities we always spent a couple of days to be able to get to know the city and its sorroundings better. After having been to New York City and New York State over christmas and new year's to visit some relatives and friends, one final longer trip after the end of my traineeship formed the end of my stay abroad: in a total of 7 weeks, starting in April 2001, I visited (this time by Greyhound and other bus companies) Las Vegas, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite National Park, Los Angeles and Disney Land, San Diego and Tijuana, Monterrey, Mexico City, Acapulco, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Villahermosa, Campeche, Merida, Tulum, Playa del Carmen, Cancun, Chichen Itza, New Orleans, Washington D.C., New York City, and Poughkeepsie. From there, I took one last 55-hour major busride across the continent back home to Calgary.

After having arrived in Calgary, the end of my foreign exchange was very near. Four days were left to pack all my suitcases and to say good-bye to all my friends. Both things turned out to be not very easy at all, but after an unforgettable good-bye party and many bye-byes at the airport I finally managed to get into the plane that took me back to Germany on June 20th, 2001.