University








The University of Ulster is divided into four different campusses: Coleraine, Jordanstown, Belfast, and Magee (Derry). About 4000 students are studying at Coleraine. Here you find faculties like Humanities, Computing, Business, Biochemistry, Nursing and some more. I was studying English Literature and History, which belong to the faculty of Humanities. Studying in Great Britain and Ireland is completely different from studying in Germany. I had already known this before I went to Coleraine but I really didn't expect it to be that different. First of all, students are much younger there than at German universities. Young Irish and British people finish their A-Levels when they are 17 or 18, two years earlier than we do. Therefore they are only 21 or 22 when they get their university degree. This is something I really had to get used to. The whole university life is more like I remember my last years at school. People are away from home for the first time in their lives...naturally they learn very quickly to see the several advantages of this: you can have parties every night, get drunk whenever you want to, snug whoever you like...For the few older people, mostly internationals, this can get rather boring after a while for the Irish students mostly have no other interests...apart from sports maybe. This does not mean that there are no Irish students with whom you might be able to lead a conversation, they are just - well - not that easy to find.
Coleraine Campus consists of a number of university buildings and the old and new halls, where mostly first year students live during terms. The Central Building and the South Building are connected by the so-called tunnel (as you can see on the picture). On the "Bridge" in the Central Building you can find a VG store, a post office, a bank and another smaller shop. There is also a Waterstone's book shop in this building, which is not very big but sells almost all the books that are read at university. Students who live on campus, therefore, actually don't have to leave the university area to buy something, although Tesco in Coleraine is of course much cheaper and, above all, much bigger. There is even a pub on campus, which is situated in the South Buiding and run by students. drinks are much cheaper there than in ordinary pubs. During the first term the Unibar was always very crowded. We used to go there after we had finished our work at the library. The pub is usually open till 11pm, sometimes also till 1am. In the second semester the bar was always empty, sometimes we went there for a pint after the theatre or something, but mostly we were the only people there.
Coleraine campus has two libraries, one in the Central Building and one in the South Building. They are not really good but the only possibility to get the books to write the several essays per semester. The thing I had to get used to was the noice in the library - sometimes the atmosphere was more like in a pub than in a library: people talk without caring to wisper or anything, they take crisps and other snacks to the library, although this is, of course, forbidden. Sometimes I really wondered why they didn't try to smoke in there. Anyway, after a while I began to write my essays in the cafeteria, where it was equally loud but where I was allowed to smoke while I was writing. As far as I know smoking is forbidden there now, so the only smoking area is in the Student's Union area at the South Building now. This is really a problem during the autumn and winter months because it is actually too cold, wet, and windy to smoke outside...well, you get used to everything after a while. Back to the library...a problem is that all students have to hand in their essays at the same time and that there are only a certain number of essay topics. So, naturally, several students want to write about the same topic. If you go to the library say two weeks before the deadline for your essay you might have the problem that there are virtually NO! books in the shelves anymore. Then you can just try and get some information via internet.
This, however, is really easy at Coleraine University. There are a great number of computer labs in both University Buildings. The largest is, as far as I know, G 096 at the Central Building, they also have better computers than in other labs (like the one at the social siences area). There is also a Computer Service building beside the Central Building, but it closes at 5pm whereas most of the other labs are open 24 hours. Checking and writing e-mails was one of our daily tasks, so the various computer labs became something like our second home. some of the internationals who lived on campus even spent whole nights in the lab and chatted with people in America and Australia.
A good opportunity to get a bit of cultural life in and around Coleraine is the Riverside Theatre, which is also situated on the university campus. Sometimes there are really good guest performances by theatre companies from London or other big cities in the UK. There is also a theatre group at Coleraine University organized by theatre studies students. They usually stage one or two plays per year. Otherwise there is almost no cultural life existing in the area. There are two cinemas, one in Portrush and one in Coleraine, but the films they show are mostly not really up to date. So, if you want to see a new released film, you'll have to go to Derry, where they have a larger cinema.





Agherton Village






There are several off campus accommodation facilities in the Coleraine Triangle. The one where I used to live is Agherton Village in Portstewart. As you can see on the pictures Agherton Village really looks like a small village. The houses are put in a circle, so that there is something like a little square in the middle. Most of those houses contain two three-room-flats, some of them also only one flat for six people. The house where I lived in was the only larger house and had three floors with a three-room-flat on each floor. They are typical Irish or British houses with small rooms and couloured front doors. Actually, Agherton Village looks really cute, especially because it is quite new (I think it is only 4 or 5 years old).
The village is a little bit outside Portstewart on the road to Coleraine. People say it was built on a graveyard...and honestly speaking, I believe this, there are four other graveyards surrounding Agherton Village. One night one of the Irish students said he saw a ghost in his shower who called himself Herbert...some people believed his story. he even called the priest to bless the house. Well, I don't know if the priest really came, but the ghost was never seen again...maybe it was only a ghost in a whiskey bottle :) There is a warden living at Agherton Village as well. The warden is a university staff member and is responsible for "law and order" in the village. He has his own flat in one of the houses and is one of the few people in the village who have their own telephone. Students can go to him if they have any problems, and he goes to the students if he has problems with them (mostly this happened when they made too much noice at night or during the exam periods). There was actually just one incident when I had something to do with the warden. This was when our toaster began to burn...the kitchen stood in flames and he had to call the firemen. They came with two fire-engines...nine men ran into our flat and came back with a black what-used-to-be-a-toaster. The whole thing was a big laughing matter for all the other students in the village, for me it was a real shock. Anyway, now I can laugh about it as well.
On the pictures below you can see what my room in Agherton Village looked like when I first entered it. The furniture was actually quite okay, but I could never use the desk really because it was too dark to read anything...I never managed to buy myself a desk lamp. Anyway, most of the time we used to work at the library or the computer lab anyway, because there we were able to type everything into the computer immediately. Honestly speaking I didn't really spend much time in that room in Agherton Village, except for some afternoons together with Eva when we drank wine together and spoke about our love for Ireland and other things that seemed to be important...
I didn't use to have a TV, so my flat was not as interesting to spend time in as some of the others' flats. As far as I can remember we always used to meet at Ninja's house to watch "Ally McBeal" and "Friends". We used to go to BP first to buy crisps and chocolate and enjoyed to do at least one night something else than going to a pub and drinking. Well, there was not much else you could do in Portstewart.
The good thing about Agherton Village was that many of my friends used to live there as well. It was a matter of seconds to get to each other, which was very important because nobody of us had a telephone. Although it is very easy to find a private accommodation in and around Portstewart I would always prefer to live in Agherton Village therefore. The problem with living there was that I had less contact to Irish speaking people. I used to live together with two Japanese girls during the first semester and with two French girls during the second semester. Of course we spoke English with each other, my French is bad - not to speak of my Japanese. But it was always a kind of pidgin English we spoke, you just can't avoid making mistakes when you are talking to non-native speakers. Besides you can't imitate the other person like you do if you are talking to Irish or English people. However, I am glad to have lived together with people from other countries, especially the time I spent together with Tomoko and Kaori, the two Japanese girls, I really appreciated. I have learned so much about their culture, and above all I have friends now in Japan, which is something I would never have expected before I went to Northern Ireland. It was just very interesting to learn that some things are the same all over the world, and it was even more interesting to find out about the differences, to see some of your stereotypes confirmed and others destroyed. Tomoko and Kaori are back in Japan now, but I am sure that I will meet them again one day. I have a reason now to go to Japan, a country I hadn't been interested in at all before I met them.