Sport treiben: Hochschulsport

Last night I finally went to the Hochschulsportzentrum .  It's basically a complex of buildings where they offer classes and exercise equipment for students - kind of like an on-campus gym, but it's a little further away, and if I read it correctly, in order to actually use gym equipment, and not just take classes, you have to pay a fee monthly or per use fee.  But then the equipment room, both weights and cardio equipment, is also where they have the climbing wall and the Vibrationstraining (which I suspect is one of those machines with a vibrating plate that you stand on, but I'm not sure what else you do).


From where I live, you can take either the #1 bus or the #7 bus from the Wilhelmstrasse bus stop.  To walk there is about 30 minutes, but it's not a bad walk, and honestly, you're going to the gym, so you probably shouldn't be complaining about a 30 minute walk. :)  The bus stop (Landhausstraße) is only a couple of minutes away from the main building.

Once you enter the main building, and you show your Student ID to get in, there are changing rooms and showers for men and women on the left hand side.  these changing rooms open onto a corridor on the other side where the three main rooms are located.  They have parquet floors, and could probably be used for basketball, though I didn't see any hoops, so I'm not sure that they are.  As we were arriving at the building, I noticed both soccer fields and tennis courts.

They offer a lot of classes for free without any sort of registration, so they can get pretty full, but they are supposedly a lot of fun.  Almost all of my friends have tried out multiple classes, and especially at the beginning of the semester I think it's probably worth going to a few of them to see how you like it.  They also offer a few classes for which you must pre-register and pay a fee.  I think it's because the teachers cost more and they only want to have a limited number of students.  Last night I went to a yoga class.  Normally you have to register and pay a fee, but I have a friend who is registered for the class, who wasn't able to go last night, so I took her place instead.  I'm sure I wasn't supposed to do it, but whatever.  It was nice.  The rest of my friends went to a "Rock and Roll" dancing class, which I think is kinda like swing dancing, but with more kicking and jumping.