Hello Internet!
It is finally that time to get down to work and have some real business classes!
In regards to registration, it is definitely a challenge and even the most experienced students can make mistakes. First of all Mannheim University doesn't have a unified online registration system. Yes you can see the courses online and the scheduled times for lectures and if they have exercises or tutorials, but you cannot necessarily register for them online. Basically, you have to go through the schedule and read the course description of every course that you're interested in. The course catalogue is your new best friend. It tells you how to register for each course and it can vary greatly. Sometimes, for large classes, you don't even have to register for the lectures! You just show up and register for the exercise or tutorial sessions. Other times there is a simple online registration where you just click 'apply' next to your chosen course. Lastly, for other courses, you need to actually email the Chair or Head of the department with your CV/resume, matriculation number (student ID number), and a reason for taking the course. Most of the time this last type of registration only occurs for seminar courses and intensive events or master's classes.
So it's the first week of class and I only ended up having two real classes because the tutorials and exercise classes don't start until the second or third week and some lectures were cancelled. Others only had information sessions during the class. It turned out to be a very relaxing week and it gave me time to get all my school supplies ready. In Germany, they have binders with only two rings instead of three like in Canada. Sometimes you'll even find ones with four so all the notebooks have four-holes and the hole punches are a bit strange. Who thought that even the number of holes in a paper would be different in Europe than in Canada!
Lectures are the same as in Canada with an instructor or Professor speaking with the aid of PowerPoint slides or handouts. They last anywhere from 90 minutes to three hours. Exercise and tutorial classes are similar to tutorials in Canada where there are Ph.D students that go through the important information from the lectures and let you know what you should focus on for the finals. Sometimes the exercise classes are more informative than the lectures and it's easier to get answers to questions because of the small class size. Another major difference that I found during lectures is that students talk in class while the Professor is speaking! It was the biggest shock to me when the room didn't immediately silence itself as the Professor was introducing himself and the course. I found it a bit disrespectful and the next week I had to sit closer to the front in order to hear what the Prof was saying. Carleton Professors should feel really lucky at how amazing the students are and how quiet we are during class! The strange thing is that the Professors here don't even regard the talking as a nuisance and they just talk over the noise.
One amazing thing I've discovered here is that you won't spend any money on textbooks! The money you've put aside for school supplies can be used for travelling instead. :) All of the information you need will be either in the PowerPoint slides or in handouts they provide or in rare occurrences, you can find multiple copies of the textbooks in the Library. There is also an online portal called "Ilias", which is similar to CULearn, and it has all of the PowerPoint slides available and extra examples and practice questions.
So with all the differences and similarities with regards to school, at the end of the day it's almost the same. There are students who want to learn and Professors who want to teach them. Their methods might be different, but the outcomes are the same: Finals.