Germans are very willing to speak english to practice theirs , once hey know you are from Canada , you will have problem to find one who speaks german with you unless you ask them to . And at least in Jena and for sure almost all other universities the students are very welcoming . And you can of course find parties and everything here . Just apply very early for a dorm , there is only a very limited amount of dorms and student sized flats are quite expensive . Oh and there aren ' t any elite universities like Harvard in Germany , all are good especially the ones run by the states , those are usually very good and you do not need to pay insane monthly fees , I do only pay 200 as a fee each 6 months and then of course rent and food and stuff . Of course some universites are better at vertain fields then others but all are good . And from the political climate at least the Friedrich Schiller University Jena is centreleft to left . I do of course mean left by german definition . I do not know how that is in Canada but in the USA the Democrats are more or less on the level of our CDU , who are centreright .