João Manuel Veríssimo Travanca

My name is João Manuel Veríssimo Travanca, I’m 19 years old and I’m a Portuguese student currently taking my bachelor’s in management in NOVA School of Business and Economics in Lisbon.

The interest of doing an exchange semester is justified first because I had to fulfil the international requisite of my home university and second, and most important, by the fact that it allow us, from different points of view, to have a distinctive look over our studies, on people, on the language, on the world, and consequently, over our future life. Which will constitute an added advantage in my professional and personal life.

One of the best parts of this experience was the city. Mannheim it’s a fantastic city for a student to live in because of its size and number of students per capita. The fact that I could live my daily life without using a car or public transportations was something that surprised me and that I really loved about the city, since in Lisbon I take around one hour to get to the university. The other great thing was that there are so many foreign students that it’s so easy to make friends, to meet them and to plan things with each other without any problem.

The academic role was also great. It was awesome to perceive a different type of ways of teaching and to learn things from a diverse perspective from the one I learnt in Lisbon. I must confess that in beginning was somewhat hard to follow this type of education, but I quickly adapted to it and, in the end, I finish with quite good grades.

The language, for me, was also a major factor in an exchange experience, therefore I decided to take a German language course in the university to know more about the language. This learning helped me with some of my life here in Mannheim and, for sure, it will help me with my future academic and professional life.

Hence, I can say that I completely loved the whole experience here in Mannheim, not only the educational part, but also the city, the people, the language, and everything that I came across with. It was definitely a deeply useful and striking experience in my life that I will never forget.

To conclude, I just have to say many thanks to the Ekkehard Foundation for helping me realizing one of my life’s biggest goals and for giving me the opportunity to live in this amazing residence.

João Manuel Veríssimo Travanca