The journey began with a mail from Prof. U.S. Tiwari explaining about the DAAD fellowship for students. It was meant for students who wished to do internship in Germany. I was very excited about the scholarship as was every other student. I started applying to German Universities. I, along with my roommate, Pulkit, got an invitation from Prof. Dr. Bernhard Steffen. He proposed that I would be working on a project related to automata learning. This was the first time I had heard of that term. But on exploring more about it, I found it to be very interesting. I then applied for the DAAD fellowship.
On February 19, 2010 I got a mail from Mrs. Manisha Mudgil that I have been selected for DAAD fellowship. I was very excited to visit Europe and began my preparations for the Eurotrip. I was so excited about the trip that I used to search about it whole day and night. I made a Eurail pass which covered 7 countries: Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg. Sadly I had to leave Spain :-(.
Now lets get started with my Eurotrip. :D I had a flight from Delhi to Dusseldorf via Helsinki. It was a great experience travelling in Finnair flights. The Helsinki airport was awesome. It had a wonderful infrastructure and a lot of shops for all kinds of stuff. After a brief visit of Helsinki Airport, I finally reached Dusseldorf. I was completely exhausted after the long flight. We then went to the Dusseldorf Railway Station which was connected to the airport through a hanging sky train. We were supposed to contact our mentor when we reached Dusseldorf. But, unfortunately, Pulkit had the wrong telephone number x-(. So we went directly to Dortmund by regional express. Fortunately, our mentor, Falk knew our flight number and had estimated the time that we were supposed to reach Dortmund. He met us on the station. He then accompanied us to our apartment. He was a nice and very helpful. He explained a bit about how life is in Germany and briefed us about the project that we were supposed to do in TU-Dortmund.
The apartment was very nice with a well equipped kitchen, TV and a heater. The next day was Sunday. So I just explored the area around my apartment. Everything was just so beautiful. It was just the beginning of my wonderful journey. Stay tuned for more updates…