I have now completed the third week of my internship here at Technical University of Dortmund in Dortmund, Germany. Right now, I am staying in one of the student dorms together with another German student. I have my own room, which is quite nice. There are many Turkish people here, so whenever I miss Turkish food, I have the opportunity to eat in one of the Turkish restaurants. Thanks to this, I don’t feel like a stranger in Germany.
Over the past weeks, I became more and more accustomed to living in Germany. The perfect balance of work life and social life is one of the things that impressed me the most. I work from 9 to 5 on weekdays, and in the remaining time, I explore Germany and the neighboring countries. It is a very lucky coincidence that Europe 2024 Football championships are played in different cities in Germany, and Dortmund is one of them. After my work, I go to local pubs to watch the games, while having a couple of german beers together with Currywurst, which is a traditional dish made of sausage and curry sauce. Even the Turkish soccer team came to play in Dortmund, and I had the chance to watch the games with Turkish soccer fans in the public viewing areas.
Another thing that impressed me about Germany is the transportation. If I walk for only 10 minutes to the train station, I can take a train to anywhere in Europe, including Amsterdam, Paris, Zurich and many more. In fact, this week I had the chance to travel to Salzburg and Hallstatt in Austria with four other interns from the US and India. I was not expecting to see the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen in my life. We climbed the mountains, traveled through the lake with a boat, and visited Mozart’s house. The combination of natural scenery and Austrian culture made me fall in love with this little town. Now, living in Austria is one of my dreams.
I love my internship here at TU Dortmund since it offers a lot of flexibility in working hours, and since I am working on what interests me. Over the past couple of weeks. I have been learning new mathematical models for making predictions based on past data. My job was to display prediction intervals, the possibility of the next future data falling in a specified range, using Python. This week, I am going to be implementing machine learning to make predictions about the future. My supervisor has been extremely helpful in guiding me through academics and making sure I was settling in without problems. She helped me connect with other students and professors in TU Dortmund.
Next week, there will be a meeting of the DAAD interns in Heidelberg. I will be traveling there to network with interns from the US, Canada, and England. I am really excited for the next weeks of my internship.