Being a student in Göttingen
Göttingen is a beautiful university town in Lower Saxony. You can reach Hanover Airport by train in 1 hour and 10 minutes (you need to make a transfer at Hanover central station, you will pay roughly 35 Euros until Göttingen). City-goers will tell you it’s too small and boring to be worth visiting more than once. Of course, if you look at the event as a tourist attraction, it is natural to expect such a comment. With a population of around 120,000, Göttingen is a small city, but it is said that “if they asked university students to design a university city, the city they would design would be like Göttingen”. So ambitious, you know.
If you look at it from my point of view, Göttingen is a university city with around 36,000 students and around 15,000 university staff. Almost everything in the city seems to be designed for students and allocated for their use. Many cafes and entertainment venues are designed to relieve the city of boredom for university students. Almost every night there are activities and the prices are extremely reasonable. University cafeterias are scattered throughout the city, and in a survey they ranked second best at German level.
There are 2 universities in the city, one of which is a university of applied sciences, and these universities meet a quarter of the educational burden of Lower Saxony. The University of Göttingen has been teaching since 1737 and is considered one of the best universities in the world with around 30,000 students.
LIFE IN GÖTTİNGEN
Göttingen is in the southernmost part of Lower Saxony and the most reasonable alternative for transportation is to fly via Hanover. There are quite a few flights to Hanover and from there Göttingen is about 135 km south. The journey takes 1.5 hours by car and around 40 minutes by high-speed train (ICE).
Göttingen is a student’s paradise and you won’t have much trouble finding a place to stay. The student union provides low-cost dormitories for around 4600 students, while many students prefer to live in shared or private apartments. While searching real estate websites, I found many reasonable places for rent. If you prefer to stay in a dormitory, I would like to remind you once again that you should apply early. Dormitories are the most preferred places for students due to their low rents, and although it is easier for foreign students to find a place in a dormitory (positive discrimination), keep in mind that there are many applications and limited places.
If you are looking for an apartment for rent, you should do your research on where to look. As in most of Germany, Göttingen is a safe and quiet city, but every city has its bad neighborhoods. Some neighborhoods can be troublesome late at night, especially for young girls. You will not hear good things when you go there, especially about the “Grone” neighborhood. This is the area where Muslim minorities (mostly Turks, but also Pakistanis and Iranians) live.
No matter where you stay, you will not want to use a car. Transportation is mainly by bicycle and you will see a lot of bicycle traffic. People have a hard time finding parking spaces for their bicycles, but bicycles are still the easiest way to get around. Public transportation is expensive for students, which makes cycling an economical and healthy alternative.
GÖTTİNGEN BY THE NUMBERS
| City Population | 118.911 |
| Number of Students | 35.431 |
| Student/resident ratio | % 29.8 |
| Number of beds provided by Studierendenwerk | 4.432 |
| Rents for accommodation provided by Studierendenwerk | 133-378 € |
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