Why Halifax?
Water behind every street corner, the seagulls cannot be ignored: The waterfront always invites you to take a walk, where you can marvel at all the cruise ships arriving. If you are looking for less hustle and bustle, you can quickly take the bus or walk (with this a large area of Halifax can be developed) in Point Pleasant Park in the south of the city, which turns into a beautiful sea of lights in autumn . And those looking for even more peace and quiet can simply grab a car and drive along the famous Lighthouse Route – a road that meanders along the coast of Nova Scotia and is perfect for several road trips. Here at the latest you can experience the Eastern Canadian nature with the small fishing villages and wooden houses, the rocky water and hiking trails between an extremely high density of trees. In the evening you can admire the most beautiful sunsets or try creations of the Nova Scotia power beers in numerous restaurants and pubs.
Halifax grew very close to my heart as a city and felt like a second home when I came home from weekend trips: Lunenburg, Bay of Fundy, Cape Breton, the region’s national parks or Cape Splitt are just a few of the addresses we have rattled off during the long weekends. But other destinations such as Montréal or Québec can also be easily reached via the airport in Halifax .
The Canadian mentality with its friendly residents did the rest of the fact that I felt very much at home in Halifax and could n’t have chosen a better city for this semester abroad . I would have loved to add another semester , because time is racing (that’s why I can only recommend catching up on people and going on excursions on the first weekends) and one semester is way too short for all the great people.
Living in Halifax
In my experience, it is easy to find an apartment on site before the start of the semester . During the search, I stayed at an AirBnB because the hostels were unfortunately already fully booked (if you want to find a bed here, you should secure it early). Although I was concerned about the fact that I flew to Canada without a room in my pocket, each of us found good accommodation within a few days . I lived in the South End (a 10 minute walk from the SMU) and can really recommend it as the bus system is not the most reliable. For my room in the house with six other internationals, I paid 600 CAD per month and was probably in the middle of the field. I found the room through the kijiji.ca portal.
According to Topschoolsoflaw, the cost of living in Canada is higher than in Germany. Cosmetics or handkerchiefs are also included, which is why they are easy to bring from Germany.
University life
With 3 courses you drive very well as a freemover who also wants to see some of the country, in my opinion. I only had to go to university two days a week and was therefore able to organize my work at home very flexibly and enable many weekend trips.
I have chosen the courses “MGSC 2207 Introductory Statistics”, “MKTG 2270 Introduction to Marketing” and “MGMT 3389 Structuring the Start-Up” . Depending on what the expectations of the course are, I can especially recommend the first two. You don’t have to be afraid of a statistics course in English, because the course is very interactive and all questions can be asked and there is a math lab in which students from higher semesters help with the processing of homeworks to be submitted. The marketing course was also very interactive due to the small number of students compared to Germany. In this course, group work determined the semester. I would rather not recommend a start-up course because of the lecturer, because, not only in my opinion, you could have learned significantly more (also with regard to the tuition fees – for me about 1300 EUR per course). If you stick with it, very good results can be achieved fairly easily in these courses – if necessary, you could even improve the German average with a semester abroad.
In addition to the courses, there are numerous clubs at SMU that you can join. They all introduce themselves on one day at the beginning of the semester. I would highly recommend to take action because it is a fun way is to socialize . With the Debating Society I was even able to go to a debating competition within Nova Scotia , which was an unforgettable experience for me .
