Fachhochschule Wiesbaden

The FH Wiesbaden has an excellent design department, but it is not as good as the faculty thinks it is. The Communications Design portion of the department has more students and more resources than the Interior Architecture half. The photography courses are good. Some of the "Projekt" courses are not. The drawing teachers are not so great at teaching, even though they are successful artists.

Design is taught very differently in Germany than in the U.S. In America, we had several short projects throughout the semester to do. We worked very quickly, and all the time! In Germany, and maybe Europe as a whole, students tend to have one semester-long project for each class that they take, and they only really do any work for the last month or so of a class. German design students do not "really" take any other classes besides design-related ones (e.g., Art History courses in which one studies, has exams, and writes papers, or any sort of course in which you write anything!).

I wished that I would have learned more German before I arrived.

Germany is a great country to study in, but if all things are equal, study at another school! I studied design here, which was OK, but there were certainly better design schools to choose from. I imagine that the same thing is true for every other subject.

Deutsche Telekom is an evil company, designed to take all of your money.

The two student dorms in Wiesbaden are nice, but they have their drawbacks. One is very close to the school, but has a sanitized, hospital-institution feel to it. The other has a friendlier atmosphere, but is located in the suburbs, quite a bus ride away! Apartments are available all over the city, and living with several actual German students, like I did, made socializing easy, especially when I first moved in.