Mustangsheba: Thanks for answering... I'm sure I will come up with some questions sooner or later. I'm actually from the middle of Germany, well, rather to the west, though. I've been moving around a bit and now I ended up (for the time being) in the Ruhr-area, a highly populated area. It still is very much a working-class area, though it is changing now. But in the medical ward you get elderly men who worked in the coal-mines a lot. Many of the hospitals you get here were formerly owned by some mine or another. There are no mines open today, though. Can you - or anyone - just explain the differences between the degrees, I think I know what an RN is, but I'm not sure about the others. In Germany, there is not much choice today. In the begin you can choose to go into adult nursing, pediatric nursing or work with the elderly, that's about it. You can specialize after your degree, but it seems very different from your system. ------------------