Personal Contacts

3rd Blog: by Bernhard Fankhauser - Tuesday, 17 January 2023, 9:03 PM
I have thought for a while now about any differences in the local people, traditions or institutions, but to be totally honest I can’t seem to make out any major differences, since my influences from a small settlement in the greater Innsbruck area and Passau area almost mirror the core influences and values here.

There would only be one thing that I warmly welcomed but also had to get used to coming from a bigger city like Munich to a smaller city and university in Liechtenstein. That would be the closeness of each other and the personal contact this provides. It feels especially different when going to the university and having the opportunity to talk to each and everybody from the department and having the people taking time to talk to me felt really special. Like I was warmly welcomed and here to not only get help or information on something but to actually be helped by somebody who has the ability to and the time to help me.

Another person that made the time here feel special was the professor of our studio Dietrich Schwarz and its Assistant David Kloeg, as we got to talk with them on a weekly basis and therefore really got to develop and improve our project within a continuous feedback loop. This was something new for me, which I really cherished, since we rarely get the opportunity to talk with our professors in Munich on a regular basis – and I am not talking about a weekly or even monthly interval. We mostly get the chance to talk to them about our project two times per semester – in the midterms and then again in the finals – which is fine but not really what one would want when developing one’s project over the time of four months. This I must say has been a great change I much appreciate, although it puts on some more pressure on the individual, since you wouldn’t want to take a week of from work because the professor will know immediately.