How to get around Erlangen
Where is what?
Here we have a small map with the most important places and addresses and some landmarks for orientation:
How to get around Erlangen on a bigger map
In green are places directly related to your student life, like the canteen, cafeteria, the different departments and of course our FSI-office:
In red are the landmarks for easier orientation, like the Arcaden (the big shopping mall), Mc Donald’s, and official places like the city hall.
In blue are pubs, cocktail-bars and other establishments we visited at our last pub crawl in wintersemester 15/16.
Residence in Erlangen
Erlangen has one of the smallest living space per capita ratios in Germany, so it is often difficult to find an apartment. There are several student dormitories, but even they can not provide a room for every applicant. A good go-to internet address is wg-gesucht, where you can find rooms in a flat-share or apartments of your own. Other addresses are real-estate-sites like immobilienscout24.de or immowelt. If you have special requirements you can go to the building society in Erlangen called GeWoBau or to a broker.
How to get around with local public transport
The quickest way to go from A to B in Erlangen is going by bike. Erlangen has very extensive bike lanes build everywhere and you will not need to worry about parking space, which is limited especially in the inner-city (not so much at the southern University-campus). Furthermore the inner-city is hard to navigate as a driver. You might want to have an old bike in Erlangen even when you arrive by car, so you can park outside the city and go by bike to you destination. You can get affordable bikes on Ebay or at local sales and sometimes even at your dorm. Sadly, the bike-theft rate is quite high, so it is recommended to get a good lock and not to ride around on the newest sports-bike.
If you want to go by local public transport, the following bus lines are the most important: The 287 drives from Arcaden to the southern University-campus every 15-20 minutes during the day and the 293 drives from Hugenottenplatz (city-center) to the southern University-campus every 20-30 minutes during the day. From the train-station to the southern-campus you will need about 20 minutes by bus. To get to the department of Maths you need to get off the bus at the bus stop „Technische Fakultät“- To get to the department of Physics you need to get off the bus at „Sebaldussiedlung“. Other important bus lines are line 20 and 30, which go from the train-station to Nürnberg-Thon and stop at the University(20) or at „Erlangen-Süd“(30).
The public transport system is provided by VGN in Erlangen, Nürnberg and Fürth. Sadly, using VGN-service is not exactly cheap: A one-way-ticket in Erlangen costs 2,10€, a ticket for a day in Erlangen is 4,60€. With your enrollment you automatically pay for a student-ticket, which is valid between 7pm-6am and on the weekend in the whole VGN-range and grants you free bus rides during these times. If you want to use public transport daily and during the daytime you can upgrade your students-ticket for 199€ in the VGN-onlineshop. This ticket is valid for a whole semester (including holidays and semester breaks) in the whole VGN-range and can be reprinted if you lose it.
Alternatively you can get weekly- and monthly-tickets for students for 12,60€ per week and 37,70€ per month. Any information regarding timetables, tickets, etc. you can get at the ESTW-office at Goethestraße 21a or at the train-station.
How to get around at the Campus
The Faculty of Sciences does not have a typical campus like other Universities, but the departments of Physics and Maths are spacious enough to confuse even some locals.
The department of Physics
The room-numbers (e.g. 00.079) have a system!
- XX.— in front of the period is the floor as follows: U1-ground level, 00-first floor, 01-second floor, etc..
- –.X– this number indicates the corridor from west to east throughout the building, 100-numbers are farthest from the lecture-halls and 700-numbers are nearest to the lecture halls.
- –.-XX these numbers count the rooms in the hallways from south to north.
If you do not want to remember all this there are floor layouts on every level. Additionally the buildings have names and numbers like A3. The western part is wing A. This is the department of Physics. Wing B refers to the department of Biology. The lecture hall is called wing C. All the wings are numbered by their location, starting from the most southern building.
Other room-numbers refer to different buildings, like TL.XXX to the ECAP-laboratories. In the map you can see all the different locations you need to know with their respective room numbers.
You can also try to find specific rooms by searching for rooms in univis.
The department of Maths
-site under construction-
How to get around outside of your studies
Pubs
You can get to know the best pubs around in our pub-crawl.
Work in Erlangen
It is much easier to get a job in Erlangen than an apartment. A lot of companies and some Institutes of Research are looking for student employees, and private tutors for school students are always wanted.
If this does not work, you might want to ask the library, the technical maintenance office or a department of your confidence. They often look for student-assistants for different tasks or lectures.