Göttingen-D250811-Day 002

Ah! Second day on foreign soil. The air was warm, the sky sunny and today was a day for errands. If you do plan on a trip to Gö or if you're new or would like to study here (probably the only reason you're here anyways). There are plenty of Volksbanks around! Sparkasse, Commerzbank and even a Deutsche Bank (city square)! In this small city! Probably cause it's a uni city. With foreigners like myself. :). Shopping isn't too bad either with big names like Saturn, H&M and supermarkets Lidl, Aldi and so forth (will come to that later...).

Next with the university business at their office just around the corner from the main street (Weedner Straße) at Wilhelmsplatz 4. There is a mini park outside the office with a statue of someone.

Later there was the business with the residence permit for aliens (foreigners) at the city hall (Neues Rathaus) located south of the city centre. Most countries I suppose would label you an alien if you've come to study, stay, work or basically wants some kind of residence permit in their land. Indeed so, indeed so. The city hall is visible from far, painted in grey and looks a rather lot serious for a building. It too might be the tallest building around.

Oh, I also got my German number. From Lidl :). It's prepaid (though you can link for autodebit and autotop-up once the value hits a certain low) and having compared the rates with other providers and what best suits my needs I went for it. Lidl uses O2 network but piggy backs on Fonic for the other miscellaneouses such as settings, balance enquiry, offers et cetera. One guide (please click for link) really helped me with the decision. It kinda beats the O2 o hands down (the plan which I was initially planning to get) given how the SIM card costs €9.95 and you get €10 worth of credit versus O2 o's €14.99 with €1 worth of credit. Not to mention the €0.15/min calls and SMS versus Lidl's €0.09/min and SMS.

So as excited as I was, I went home and swapped out my old SIM card. Activation of the card is done on the internet sadly or by filling a form and sending in by post. Or you could call them up. Having done that, you gotta wait for about 2 hours for it all to set in (with the phone OFF). I later received settings for my phone via SMS to use the internet etc but the link was of a website (internet). How dumb is that???!?! Given how I'd no connection to the net with my phone (basically the whole point of wanting an internet plan right? pshh). So I googled up and entered in the settings manually. And it all worked out nicely ever after....

Here's the link to manually set up your internet on your phone incase you hit the brickwall.

PS:

• If you're reading this and have decided to go Lidl on yourself. Please, please please....give me a holla and I will throw you my number. A €5 Reward goes to you. And me :). Germany-wide. 
• If you've read the guide on the different mobile operators I provided, please note that only Lidl and O2 o has the lowest internet plan per month at €8.99 (Not Fonic!).