Full breakdown of the Masters of Medical Life Sciences at the Christian Albrechts University of Kiel, Germany: Rules, Campus facilities, Semesterticket, Student card and more

Last Updated on: 25th June 2026, 06:14 pm

From 2021 to the end of 2022, I lived in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein in Germany to study the Masters of Medical Life Sciences at the Christian Albrechts Universität (CAU), also known in English as the University of Kiel.

I posted a short campus tour on youtube, and since then I’ve been getting direct messages and comments from people asking me about this course and life in Kiel.

So I will be creating a series of posts about this and life in Germany and Kiel in general, so make sure you subscribe to get notified.

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Disclaimer:

All the information, views and reviews are based on my personal experiences and situation at the time (2021-2022). Not everyone’s experience and views are the same, since different people have different situations, so there will be very different reviews if you ask around. Yours might be different, so I will try my best to explain why I felt a certain way, and you can decide whether you share the same views as I do. for the most up to date information, you should ask the university or current students.

Real names have not been included, and some staff roles have been made vague on purpose.

This is a long post that covers a variety of topics. In-depth content will follow. Subscribe to get notified.

This article covers:

About Kiel

Kiel is a coastal city that is about 96km north of Hamburg, on the Baltic sea.

It is the capital city of the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. Its population in 2024 was around 250,000 people.

Warning for new arrivals: If you arrive in June as a student (or other long term resident for that matter), and your dormitory or other accommodation arrangements have not been confirmed, it will be extremely difficult if not impossible to get accommodation, even as a couch surfer. So, make sure your accommodation is sorted out before you arrive.

Transportation access in Kiel

Kiel has a main train station, the Kiel Hauptbahnhof. It is served regularly by trains going to and from Hamburg Hauptbahnhof.

The closest functioning airport to Kiel is Hamburg International Airport. You will then have to find a way to get from Hamburg Airport, which has its own train station (U-Bahn), to Kiel.

The easiest way to get from Hamburg International Airport is to get a (U-Bahn) train from the airport to Hamburg Hauptbahnhof (Hamburg Main/Central Station), then from Hamburg Hauptbahnhof to Kiel Hauptbahnhof, using the local and regional trains. The trip is free with your Semesterticket (now known as the Deutschlandsemesterticket). More information on this will follow.

Note that there is also a Kielius (a brand) bus airport bus that travels between Hamburg airport and Kiel, but this is not included in your Semesterticket and will cost extra.

Platforms in German train stations can be split into sections. Find out about this and read more about public transport here.

More posts coming soon on getting to Kiel and living in Kiel. Subscribe to get notified.

What is the Masters of Medical Life Sciences at the University of Kiel, Germany?

The Masters of Medical Life Sciences is a 2-year masters-level university degree at the University of Kiel, in in the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. It is theory based and taught in English and attracts students from around the world, due to the fact that public universities in Germany are free, even for international students, and that it is taught in English, which is taught as a second language and thus has become the lingua franca in many countries. There is a limited number of students, around 15, so the cohort is small. My cohort had people of a variety of ethnic and nationality backgrounds including but not limited to Indonesia, India, Pakistan, America, Russia, Australia, Canada, Nigeria, Brazil, and domestic Germany. I also made friends studying other things, from China, Vietnam, and America.

About the Masters of Medical Life Sciences at the University of Kiel, my experience

The Masters of Medical Life Sciences is not a hands-on course.

The Masters of Medical Life Sciences is not a practical-based course, at least it was true in 2022. In the first year consisted of subjects (called ‘modules’) that everyone had to do, and is theory and paper based and had no practical, hands on laboratory components.

Only in the second semester of the second year, did we get close to doing anything in the laboratory, and that was only because I specifically chose a subject that had a laboratory element (MolOcular).

Subjects I liked:

One of the subjects/modules we did was MolPatho, which is molecular pathology, where we looked at pictures of pathology slides of things including but not limited to, blood and bone marrow, and described in words what we saw. It is important in science to be able to describe and report on things objectively, and that is what pathology is about – describing and reporting what you see without bias without guessing or making a diagnosis, so as not to influence diagnoses in any direction. We also discussed real world things like the Whipple Procedure for pancreatic cancer, and autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes. This was a fun subject and I thoroughly enjoyed it because it has practical implementations, even if the subject itself is not practical. We learnt the pathophysiology of these diseases and where appropriate, the treatment method. The teacher was very nice and clearly knowledgeable. This was one of the only subjects I actually enjoyed, and I thoroughly love biology and medical science.

But:

What I didn’t like

The problem is, this was not a hands on course, and we didn’t prepare our own blood smears or paraffin sections of real tissue, and didn’t see real ones in a lab environment, which I think, for a master’s level, is disappointing. The other disappointment was, any time we came across something interesting, like the Whipple procedure, we were told we won’t be examined on it, we won’t be going into detail about it, and we don’t need to know it. My question is then, what are we even doing if were aren’t learning anything?

The other subject I enjoyed was Pharmacology, which was more like a general introduction than anything detailed, but it was very interesting to learn the mechanisms of action of certain drugs.

For the rest of the modules: I didn’t particularly hate the other subjects, but there were definitely aspects I disliked, for several different reasons.

Statistics:

I don’t particularly like statistics in general, but it is a highly practical skill to have as a scientist, and even though I already completed a statistics subject in my bachelor’s, I quite looked forward the statistics module in the masters, so I could study this subject at a more advanced level.

The consensus among students was, unfortunately, what made the statistics module difficult in this course was that the teacher was not very prepared and not very good at teaching.

The teacher seemed very confused, unprepared, and either did not know the content that they were supposed to be teaching, or they did not know how to explain it. I am certain it is not a language issue, since the teacher said they lived in England for some time, and there was no language problem with any of the teachers. I remember specifically, after the first lesson, all the students were very worried/upset/annoyed because it seemed like we were not going to be able to learn anything from the teacher and we would have to teach the content to ourselves. One student was even annoyed that the teacher told us to come prepared next time, because the teacher themselves seemed unprepared. We had to come up with our own way of passing it – some students said they will have to look it all up in their native language. We ended up spending tutorial classes, where we were supposed to do exercises, asking questions and essentially repeating what was supposed to be taught to us in the lectures, to the PhD student who led the tutorial class, and the PhD student seemed to know more about the topic and can actually explain things better than the teacher.

Systems Biology:

Another class sounded interesting in theory, Systems Biology, which was the study of how individual aspects in a whole system affects the outcome. For example, the process by which certain bacteria can produce certain outputs depending on the input, such as whether their environment was aerobic or anaerobic, or whether their nutrient was glucose or something else. This is actually very straightforward and makes sense, since some organisms can switch their metabolic processes in order to survive, based on availability of different nutrient sources. As an example, humans can use fat if glucose is not available, but the outcome is different, since the brain cannot use fat long term. However, the content was very abstract and taught in a confusing way. What I found was ironic was that a friend from an English speaking background, said the only reason they passed the subject was because they did a free Coursera course on this topic.

MolBio:

This was the academic subject/module I disliked the most. The contents of the subject/module were mostly highly theoretical topics, like time of flight mass spectrometry and next generation sequencing with oilgos. It wasn’t particularly explained in a good or engaging way either. Finally, when it came to the exam, the exam questions did not reflect the concepts we learnt, but were worded in an overly complex way about specifics, so I did not pass it on the first go. While I don’t remember the exact questions, from memory, the questions were more like “Of which of the following materials would you find in a heating box commonly used to make food warm or to cook it, and what are some characteristics of this material that make it ideal for this application?” when you could have just asked “Which of the following material are found in ovens and why is it used?”. It’s as if the exam questions were written as conceptual exercises aimed at PhD students with practical experience without actually providing us the training.

I do know other people also did not pass it, and I heard that it is a subject many people don’t pass, and obviously not everyone failed it, but I strongly feel it is a subject issue, and not a student issue. I haven’t failed a single other subject in my bachelors (or the master’s for that sake). To make matters more frustrating, this was the only module that had no practise questions available for us to review or study with.

Modules I had credited:

The list of subjects in general did not sound particularly exciting, and I found myself picking the ones that sounded least boring when it came to the second year, whereas in my bachelor’s I was struggling to pick ones I wanted to do, because we were only allowed a limited number of subjects, and I wanted to do them all.

I was surprised at the lack of detail or depth the subjects/modules went into. I had at least 3 subjects credited to my master’s course:

Anatomy:

I had already done a full anatomy subject/module in my bachelor’s program, it was even a hands-on one with trip(s, though I believe it was one trip) to the cadaver lab, which the master’s program did not include, so I got this credited.

There was a subject, the exact name I had forgotten, but it was to train us in writing in English for the scientific community. This actually made sense so I have no complaints over it, since bachelor degrees in Germany are in German, and this masters degree is taught in English and attracts students from all over the world, whose native language might not be English, and in the scientific world, reports and journals are published in English. I was able to get this credited, since my native language is English and I completed my bachelor’s degree in English in an English-speaking country.

I also had Human Genetics credited. I was very surprised, because the genetics subject I did in my bachelor’s degree was only half a subject – “haematology and cytogenetics” combined. In order to get a subject credited, you had to submit evidence that you did it, your results, and what that subject/module covered, which is done by sending them a copy of the subject description. Since my bachelor’s subject on cytogenetics was only half a subject, and I got it credited, it meant that what I did in my bachelor’s was already equivalent to the contents that the master’s module would cover. Indeed it was – I attended one or two classes before my request for recognition of prior learning was processed, and we did a karyotyping exercise with paper cutouts, just like in my bachelor’s.

You can only get a subject credited if your previous subject covers at least all of the things the master’s subject covers. When I applied for credit, at first, I left out a small detail, specifically that we covered karyotyping, and was initially denied. Then I submitted it again and included evidence that I did karyotyping, and the entire human genetics module was credited.

I had these credited because as much as I like these topics, I felt that it was unnecessary to repeat anything that I didn’t have to repeat, especially at the cost of my free time, increased workload, and health problems.

Other issues

Read a full breakdown of the other issues I encountered in this course here.

There is one particular staff member that almost every student had, let’s say, complaints and trouble with. This made the course all that more irritating, because several rules was determined by this person. Let’s call this person “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”. This staff member apparently had no trouble directly criticising the students, even to the point of making a student cry.

All of the other teachers were perfectly pleasant and friendly to be around.

Unnecessary grading:

One aspect of the course that I and many others didn’t like and felt was completely unnecessary was, one of the modules had us prepare and run a mini presentation/conference where we each make a presentation on a topic, and also invite outsider guest lecturers to speak and ask questions.

This was a great idea in theory – scientists regularly attend conferences and network to find out what other scientists are doing. The problem was, not only were we graded on our presentation, we were given additional extra curricular non-academic and unrelated tasks and graded on them, to the point that it was no longer fun.

Additional tasks included making a map and flyer for guests, finding our own guest lecturers to invite, hosting the conference, and setting up and preparing morning tea.

Inflexibility and bureaucratic frustrations

A lot of the rules in the course, and whether you pass or not seemed like it was up to arbitrary rules set by “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”, as already seen above. From an overall point of view, these were small all issues, but annoying nonetheless.

The lessons for this course were mostly not recorded. For other courses, recorded lectures were apparently the norm. I know this because I regularly spoke to students from other courses, and my friend and neighbour, a Nepalese-American, told me his classes were all recorded.

This was disappointing for us because we started the course online, live, during COVID lockdowns when we had students from around the world attending from their home countries. For some, it was 3am in the morning, not an ideal time to be taking a class. This student asked for the lectures to be recorded. We did record one lecture once, but in order to do so, we had to all sign an agreement to allow our face and voice to be recorded (the class was done via Zoom and Big Blue Button). This is completely understandable, since Germany and Europe in general has strict privacy rules. Everyone happily signed it since it was what we all wanted, but it was only recorded once.

The 14% missed class rule

Finally, I was very frustrated by the 14% missed class rule that seemed to only exist in our degree. This rule stated that if you missed 14% of seminars for a module, you are no longer eligible to do the exam for that module that year, meaning even if you do the rest of that module, you can’t pass the subject till the next time you pass that subject’s exam.

The brief explanation is, if you missed more than 14% of specific type of classes for specific modules even if you were absent because you were sick, you won’t be allowed to do the exam for that subject that year, meaning your graduation will be delayed since can’t graduate until you pass it. This is a problem

Obviously no one can choose when to get sick and whether or not TO get sick. However, by the 14% rule, if you happened to miss a seminar class because your were sick, and one seminar class equates to 14% of all seminar classes for the module, then you have violated this rule.

Read more about it here.

What attracted me to do this course? Why did I do this course?

Obviously I didn’t know what the course is like until I did it, and even if I had a detailed review like this to help me decide at the time, you really can’t truly know whether you like something until you experience it yourself. I did also get into the University of Düsseldorf, but that was a plant and bacteria based course which did not interest me, and the classes seemed less well-made than even the Kiel one, based on the classes I attended online during COVID. We the students were given an assignment and basically told to figure it out and do it ourselves with no real instructions.

Although I disliked the course, I absolutely enjoyed living in Germany and the opportunity to experience another culture, make friends, and to travel around Europe.

There are several reasons why I chose to do this course and Kiel specifically.

Why I chose to move to Germany

The very first reason was that I have a tumultuous family situation. Because of my disabilities and chronic illnesses, I have been unable to get meaningful and long term work, so I live with my parents. My father however, is physically and verbally abusive towards me, and plays extreme favourites in favour of my sister. Anything she did, either a blind eye was turned, or it was blamed on me. Over the several decades, through his influence, he has created an environment and attitude among the family members that is aggressive towards me. If I then fight back, I am the one causing trouble. As an analogy, any African American protester in the 1900s to 1930’s during segregation, who protested against injustice, were the ones causing trouble, when in fact it was the government/people running the house, that were creating an unfair environment that required the people to fight back in the first place.

My home city is one of the most expensive cities to live in, in the world, and financially, I was not able to move out. After having lived in Kiel, I know that tenants are better protected in Germany than my home country, and costs were cheaper in Germany than my home country, even if it was because I was a student.

People like to stay in their comfort zone, even if it is not ideal. The inertia of moving out of an non-ideal but familiar situation is strong. The idea of moving to a new country is a much stronger motivation than simply moving to another suburb or even state in one’s home country. This is probably something you will not understand until you experience it. In fact, I am not the only one to have moved to Germany for this reason, at the time of writing, I recently found a post on an online forum posted by another person who moved to Germany for the same reason.

I also feel that, in my experience, anti-discrimination rules were much more strict in Germany than in my home country and it definitely made a difference in my ability to get a job in Germany, I managed to do this as soon as I arrived in Germany, whereas in my home country, I’ve been directly told to go home when I turned up for an interview, and even physically grabbed at work and being accused of being there as an unauthorised person.

I also already knew some German language, and knew that university in Germany is free, even for international students.

So, I felt it was the perfect opportunity to get away from the domestic situation, and if I can get a free degree out of it, even better.

Why Kiel?

When I was researching places to study in Germany, I had to consider several things. I used DAAD to look for relevant courses.

Finding a suitable university: First, I narrowed it down to only public universities, since private universities are not free like public universities.

Finding a course taught in English: Next, I looked only for master’s programs taught entirely in English. Most masters degrees are taught in English, some are in a mix of English and German.

Finding a relevant course: Then, the degree had to be in an area of my study and interesting. Since I already had a bachelor’s of science, I wasn’t about to go a masters of say literature or history, something I had no interest nor knowledge in. Looking for too specific topics gave no results, so I looked in general for biology. This really narrowed down the available courses, of which Kiel was one, Düsseldorf was another.

Not all of the courses I applied to were 100% ideal. For example, the one in Düsseldorf was related to biology, but biology is a vast topic, and this program was about bacteria, plants, and algae, and I was more interested in human biology, but I did not study and am not interested in neurology. But, if you remember my initial and number 1 motivation, it was still better than nothing. I actually started the Düsseldorf course first since their classes started first. It didn’t take long for me to dislike it. One particular assignment had us students go off and do the assignment ourselves without actually being taught anything. I even asked one of the students in my group at the time, whether classes in Germany were always like this.

So then when the opportunity for the medical life sciences course came up, I selected this, because on paper it sounded like something I am interested in and was exactly a mirror of my medical sciences bachelor’s degree.

Cost of living: While I was looking for a suitable course, I also kept in mind cost of living in Germany. Coming from a country with a weaker currency to the Euro, I wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t be too high. As far as I knew, I would be relying on my savings. I already knew that living in Germany is cheaper overall than my home country, only because of things like how tenants have greater rights and protection, there was a rental cap in Berlin, and students get free public transport (which is not the case in my home country), and the rental prices seemed on par with my city in major cities like München.

So Kiel seemed like a reasonable choice. It was a place where costs of living were low. It was also close to Hamburg, a major city and large enough place that I can go to if I ever felt stuffy in the relatively small city of Kiel, and with the semester ticket, travel would be free.

About the University of Kiel/Christian Albrechts Universität in Germany

The official name of the university is the Christian Albrechts University, it is known as the University of Kiel since it is located in Kiel. It has several campuses, and its entire campus is spread out over a wide area, some 5km apart.

Campuses and facilities

UKSH Campus

The medicine/science faculty is at the UKSH campus (UniversitätsKlinikum Schleswig-Holstein) and is where the classes for this course takes place.

On site is, among other things, a hospital, a small botanical garden, a literature house, lecture halls, cafeteria, laboratories, and a student dormitory.

Most of the courses take place on one side of the campus, the north east side on Schwanenweg (“Swan’s Way”) in a conference room. There were some steps going up to this room and it was in a staff building. We also had some classes in an anatomy theatre, lecture hall, and computer room.

Pharmacology was on the south side near Brunswicker Straße and later, we had classes on the west side near Feldstraße, and my practical classes were in the lab, which was a modern lab.

It wasn’t until later did I realise it was all part of the same campus. It is technically within walking distance, around 650m in one direction, although the trip involves some stairs, and was too much of a walk to me, so I had to go out to the bus stop and take a bus to the other side, luckily, classes on either side were not back to back, for example there was a lunch break in-between.

Most of our classes were on the Schwanenweg side. On that side of the campus, there are mostly office buildings, the old botanical garden, the computer room, the literature house, and the hospital. There were hardly any place to sit to have lunch, let alone an indoors place to do so, and in winter it was quite inconvenient. We actually asked, but we were not allowed to stay inside the conference room where we have classes for lunch, even though we were the only ones using it, because we were not allowed to be in the room (actually any room, even the computer room) without a teacher. Luckily for my cohort, a student is staying in the on-site dormitory and we would eat in the common room at the dormitory. As for the computer room – just a heads up: for classes where we had to learn a programming software (R), if you could not download the software to your own computer or you did not have your own computer, your time in the computer room will be limited to tutorial sessions.

There is a modern building with a commercial cafeteria onsite (on the Feldstraße side) selling food for the staff and students, as well as visitors. Staff and students get a discount. They try to provide a variety of food but it is not the best in terms of flavour. I think I am the pickiest eater among most of my friends, but I once ate there with an European friend from Europe, and they could not finish the food, and had to throw it out.

It did have German sausages and were very affordable, around 2-3€, and that European friend took their parents when they were visiting, to try the sausages there.

On a related side note: the “Asian” food in Kiel is generally not authentic, and the “Asian” food in the cafeteria was as authentic as Richard Haydn playing an Asian person in the tv series “Bewitched“. But this is not their fault per se.

I met a local that enjoys cooking authentic Asian dishes, who mentioned to me that, in their experience, many people in Germany aren’t familiar with the distinctions between different Asian cuisines. This was indeed reflected in the availability of Asian products and stores. A lot of stores labelled as ‘Asian supermarkets’ stock a mix of products from a wide range of countries —Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian, Turkish, and more—all under one roof. Even in mainstream supermarkets, items are sometimes grouped under broad labels like ‘Chinese vegetables’ (consisting of a mix of canned mushrooms and baby corn), or ‘China sauce’, which seems to serve as a general-purpose flavouring rather than truly being any particular sauce from or used in China.

It seems that the food, although not authentic, is still suited to local palates. The local students and staff seem to have no trouble eating there, as they have a lot of patrons every day.

Main campus

The main campus is actually in Westring. The main lecture hall there is the famous Audimax. The uniquely shaped Audimax is the main lecture hall that almost everyone else has classes in, and somewhat disappointingly, we never had a single lecture there, or any classes on that campus, which is where it really feels like a lively university campus.

Cafeteria

On the main campus, there are shops, print shops, cafes, administration offices, classrooms, and a school cafeteria (Mensa). This cafeteria was a university one and had more affordable food, and a large dining hall. You do have to put money on your student card first and pay with your student card, which is a bit annoying. There are charging machines on site.

Libraries

The university has more than one library. The main one is on Leibnizstraße and is very well facilitated. It has several floors, books in various languages and topics, printers, and has plenty of space to study. I really liked the library. Even though it was some way away from my campus, getting there was not much of a problem because the buses were free with your semester ticket.

Sports Center

CAU has their own sports center, the Sportsplatz. Like the library and the campuses, this is also on its own site, but getting there is not a problem with the semester ticket. It has an outdoor running track, ball court, and an indoor swimming pool. The 2022 Kiel Special Olympics was held there.

Your student card

Your student card will be mailed to you with a photo you provide. When you get it, you have to activate it. In order to activate your student card, you have to go to one of the machines on campus, usually a library. Simply put it in and follow the directions.

Semester ticket (now known as the DeutschlandSemesterticket)

This is a brief overview. For details on the Semesterticket (Deutschlandsemesterticket), click here.

The information here is specific to students going the CAU in Kiel, but also applies to universities in Lübeck and Flensburg. For the full list and area of validity, see this page: https://asta.uni-kiel.de/en/semesterticket/geltungsbereich/.

What is the Semesterticket (now known as the Deutschlandsemesterticket)?

The Semesterticket is a transportation ticket issued to students in Germany that allows students to use the public transportation system for free.

Previously the ticket was called the Semesterticket Schleswig-Holstein. Since the last season (2024-2025), it is now known as the Deutschland-Semesterticket. Not all universities have this, but most of them do.

It is only valid for the ticket holder, and your ticket will have your photo and name on it. It is now valid across the entire country on participating transport services, usually public buses, ferries, trams, and trains (ferries from Kiel to Sylt and private services like Flixbus and Flixtrain are not included). For trains, it is only valid in second class and on local and regional trains (ie, not ICE trains). No bookings are required.

Who issues the ticket?

The transportation body that governs and issues the ticket will be different for each area. For example, for students in Schleswig-Holstein (Kiel, Lübeck and Flensburg), it is the NAH.SH, Nahverkehr Schleswig-Holstein (Local Transport Schleswig-Holstein), but for students in Hamburg, it’s the HVV, Hamburger Verkehrsverbund (Hamburg Transport Association). It is only issued to participating universities, but most universities have it, and is included in your semester fee.

How do you get a Semesterticket/Deutschlandsemesterticket?

The Deutschlandsemesterticket (previously the Semesterticket) is only issued to participating universities and schools, your school will tell you if they have this, most do.

To get the ticket, you have to re-order it every semester when you pay your semester fee, which covers the cost of the ticket, to the university.

What is a semester fee?

While tuition is free, each semester, you have to pay a few hundred (around 200-300 Euros in Kiel 2022, a price increase is coming for the winter semester, 2026) Euros. This confirms your enrolment, basically an admin fee, and validates your semester ticket. You cannot get a semester ticket without it. After it is approved, your ticket will be activated. You do have to do some steps, like uploading your photo and adding the verification code you receive upon paying your semester fee.

How do you use the Deutschlandsemesterticket (previously called the Semesterticket)?

Most students use the digital one by downloading the NSH transportation app on their smartphone and logging in. The app will have your personal ticket on it, and it is also the app to check local buses and trains (regional and non-regional) within Schleswig-Holstein. If you want, you can request a paper one.

To use the actual tickets: on a bus, simply show the driver the ticket page in your app, or the paper ticket. On a train, do the same when someone comes to check the tickets.

Ticket areas of validity

The area of validity and services of validity can vary, for students going to Kiel, Lübeck, or Flensburg, check out the details here: https://asta.uni-kiel.de/en/semesterticket/geltungsbereich/. Generally, it is valid across the entire country (previously it was only valid in the state it was issued), but there are some services that it is not valid on.

There is a detailed set of rules that tells you about the areas of validity, you can check this on the NSH website. But in general: For students at the university of Kiel, Flensburg, and Lübeck, can travel for free within Kiel, Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein (including to Lübeck and to Sylt), to Hamburg, to Hamburg airport, and within Hamburg, on buses, local trains (RE (regional) and RB bahns), underground metros (U-bahn), overland trains (S-Bahns), are all free. Within Kiel, you can also use the local ferries for free too (note: this does not include the overnight cruises to Goteborg, Sweden that departs from Kiel).

Important Note!

The semester ticket is not valid on long distance and private transport providers like ICE trains, Flixbus, and the airport Kielius buses, which travels between Hamburg airport and Kiel. This means if you are coming to Kiel for the first time and arriving in Hamburg

When boarding a bus or ferry, simply show the ticket to the driver. On a train, show them this when someone comes to check tickets.

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