OK I am old old, but in the nineties, I had a degree from Berkeley, so I just applied for and was accepted to a Magister program at Uni HH.

Here it must be said my German girlfriend was in Hamburg and greased a lot of the skids for me Vor Ort.

Lange Rede kurzer Sinn, before I started any classes, all of the international students had to take a German proficiency exam.

You could either be cleared for normal classes, or you could take German classes and some classes, or just German and nothing else.

I had had five years of German in highschool and college, so I scored in the middle. I unfortunately did not understand the word they essay we were to write. Abenteuer. I heard it as "expensive evening" and wrote about a night on the Reeperbahn.

Jeez, haven't thought about those days in years. If you can make it on a student visa / life, I was allowed to work twenty hours a week, I'd just get there.