Year abroad in Germany. Need a German bank account?

[Brabant93]

My DS is starting a year studying in Germany this month. He has a Nationwide student account which has no fees for transactions abroad. Does he need a German bank account as well?

He could open a Starling account too, and have a linked Euro account.

It's useful to have a local account for paying rent etc and they tend to do bank transfers more, which can be a pain from a UK account and possibly even more so after Brexit.

He's lucky his year is still going ahead, I hope he enjoys it, it was the best year of my life (so I went back for a second one!)