"India I am coming" - I got the letter of acceptance from IIMB half a year before the start of the exchange term. The Program Management of Mannheim Business School provided me with all the necessary information I needed to prepare for my time abroad. I received first information about the visa application process, course selection, accommodation, term dates around the same time. There were three important things for me to do in advance: Apply for the student visa at the consulate, send some documents and pictures to the administration office at IIMB and confirm that I want to have a room in the hostel block. That's it – all the other things were organized by MBS. Thanks a lot for that.

I didn't hear much from IIMB until the first term in Mannheim already started (one thing I learned in India was to stay relaxed if things take more time…). It was at the beginning of October when the bidding process for the courses was announced. At IIMB you bid for the courses you want to take by allocating a maximum number of 1000 points to three to five courses of your choice. The variety of courses was huge with subjects from economic, finance, strategy, operations, history and entrepreneurship to soft skill courses. We joined the last term in the second year of the two-year MBA program (called Postgraduate Program, PGP), that's why a lot of the courses were advanced courses (i.e. advanced corporate finance) or focused on a specific topic in the area of marketing or economics (i.e. brand management, global financial markets). The course descriptions were very helpful to get an overview of what pre-requisites each course had. Courses were offered from Monday morning to Saturday evening and each course consisted of 1 ½ hours lecture twice a week. As I said before, the courses were allocated in a bidding process. There was a mock bidding which helped us to get a feeling which courses are worth what number of points. My strategy for the bidding process was to select courses offered from Wednesday to Saturday and allocate 70 percent of my bidding points for my two favorite courses that were ranked highly and allocate the rest to the remaining three. It worked out and I got all the courses in the first round (there were three rounds until all the students had selected their courses). As I took the chance to change some courses after the first week, I will tell you about my final course choice later.

The term in Bangalore already started at the beginning of December. This meant that we left Mannheim before the end of term one. As we missed the exams in two courses we had to write assignments instead (we were given three or four different topics to choose one from and write a twelve page paper on it to hand it in after four weeks).

I arrived in India on a Friday, got my room in the new hostel block and explored the campus a bit. In the evening after dinner I got a phone call from another exchange student saying that we have got class next morning at 8 o'clock. I was a bit surprised, because I was told that class starts the following week and we did not get any notice about the earlier start. We finally got the email at 10pm on Friday night – last minute emails, just a few hours before the class –– common practice here and something to which I, as a German ☺, had to get used to.

For the rest of the weekend I used the free time to get to settle down and get to know the other exchange and Indian students on the campus.

The campus itself is huge and very nice (I call it "the green oasis"). It is convenient to have everything you need (canteen, coffee shop, kiosk, gym, library, computer room) on campus and within walking distance. All the PGP students (Postgraduate Program students, the two year MBA program at IIMB which we joined in their last term) live on campus. Every student had a room for him/herself (about 12m²) with shared bathrooms (about 8-10 students). We exchange students were moved into the newest hostel blocks which were opened just a few months before.

In the tuition fee for IIMB, accommodation and the food of the canteen is already included. At the canteen – placed in the middle of the campus - they offer breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. The food that is served is Indian vegetarian food, but you can buy meat every day for lunch and dinner for about 0.50 €. Personally, I like Indian food and spicy food. At the beginning, I liked the canteen food very much, but at the end I preferred to eat at one of the restaurants around. At night, starting at around 10:30 you can get rice, noodles and dosas at the night canteen for which you have to pay extra (for noodles about 0.30 € – affordable even for students).

The first week started with a lot of bureaucratic work. I didn't count, but I suppose I needed about 10-15 pictures in these first day, a lot of passport copies and hours of waiting time. After three days of running from one administration office to the other I finally had my student card, my "bonafide letter", my residential letter and a mobile phone card.

The first lecture week was kind of an introductory week where you could sit in all the courses and see whether they offer what you expected from the syllabus. At the end of the week, we were allowed to change up to two courses in the add/drop process. After talking to students and professors to find out what I can expect from the respective course, I took the chance to change some of my courses.  The final course selection was the following:

• International Negotiation Skills
  (this course was based on the Harvard Negotiation Project. Besides we discussed cultural differences in social behavior, communication and business practices)
• Inclusive Business Model
  (how to target the Bottom of the pyramid with profitable business models. This was the course provided the highest learning experience about the current economic situation, trends and social conditions in India. Moreover, it gave interesting insights in the challenges this country has to overcome to eradicate poverty)
• Multinational Management
  (a case based course on various topics in strategic management. This course was the most intense with a lot of readings. The reading material was excellent, however too much in terms of volume)
• Global Financial Markets
  (a combination between economics and finance about foreign exchange markets and monetary policy. I expected a practical course with in insights into current financial scenarios. However, the course was rather theoretical, focusing on the time between 1980 and 2000)
• Project & Portfolio Management
  (a theoretical overview of project management with two lectures on MS Project.)

In each course, we had lectures of 1,5 hours twice a week. Although this does not seem too much, I completely underestimated the pre- and post-preparation necessary for each of the course. Often, I had about 200-300 pages to read for the five courses I took. Although, I had courses on only 4 days a week there was barely any leisure time and I studied every day including weekend. At the beginning I had the plan to use the weekends to travel in the south of India, however, due to the workload of the five courses I was not able to do so.

Group work starting from 10 pm with midnight meal at 1.00 am … it might sound weird to you, but that's not unusual at IIMB. Besides these late night meetings, I had to get used to the student's habit to work last minute. Projects were often started a few hours before the deadline and structure of workload was missing. As a German you tend to plan everything well in advance and at the beginning it was quite hard to handle the Indian "flexibility". However, I was puzzled by the creativity the students developed under this time pressure and how they, seemingly unorganized, manage to hand in papers of excellent quality.

Another practice that was common at IIMB was postponing the deadlines and slightly changing the task of an assignment a few days before it is due.  I quickly adopted an "Indian work style", starting with a paper one or two days before it is due, to avoid double work.

So far I have only told you what happened on campus. Of course, I acquired a lot of experiences outside. Life is thrilling on the streets in India. I could spent hours just looking around: seemingly totally disorganized traffic, crowds people on the street no matter what time, a lot of cows and waste on the street, noise from cars and people talking and shouting at each other etc. At the beginning, I had to get used to all this but this was exactly what made my experience in Bangalore so particularly Indian. I was able to experience both – people living at the Bottom of the pyramid but I also met young people who worked hard to live their dream of climbing up the social ladder and driving India up to a world economy.

To get closer in touch with Indian tradition and culture, I decided to take a one week yoga and meditation course and visited a guru. Unique experiences, that inspired me most during my time in Bangalore.

Besides that, I took the chance to do some bargain shopping in the city Centre to buy both, Western and Indian clothes and accessories.

The workload of the five courses I had was pretty intense. In all of my courses I had pre-readings for each lectures (up to 50 pages per course) and at least one assignment or presentation to hand in for one of the courses per week. Time became even tougher before exam times. At IIMB we had mid- and end-term exams in most of the courses. The students from IIMB were pretty relaxed because their grades from term 6 don't really matter as placements already started and will be over before grades come out. The exams themselves depended totally on the professor, however, most of them were designed like typical school exams: Several questions that require detailed and specific answers. Personally, I prefer essay-like questions were you can apply your knowledge, rather than writing down what you learned by heart. Instead of end-term exams, some courses required comprehensive project work (i.e. we had to come up with a business plan for an inclusive business model in one of the courses) or a written assignment. I was very happy and much more relaxed after the exams were over. But after the end-term exams that also meant that my time at IIMB was over.

After the exams were over, most of the exchange students – including myself – started to travel. If you are in India take that time to explore this unique and exciting country! It is worth it!

Finally, it was time for me to say "goodbye India" – but for sure, I will be back one day! ☺