During the winter holidays Ilse van Zyl attended the EBS summer school for Bachelor students; here is her report.
If you are reading this blog entry, you have most likely been selected to attend the EBS summer school in Germany. How exciting! I have included some suggestions with regards to your preparation for the trip abroad, information about the visa application and also some tips that worked for me.
Pre-departure:
First of all, I was notified that I would be going to the Summer School about 3-4 weeks before the date set for the departure. This might seem like too little time, but you do not have to worry, here is a list of things you need to do to in preparation for your trip:
- When they let you know for sure, buy your flight ticket.
I bought a ticket from Cape Town to Frankfurt (via Dubai) for R6640 with Emirates (I would recommend them). Some of the other students had direct flights for around R8500.
- Now that you have the flight ticket, book you visa appointment on the website of the German Consulate. I applied for a visa that applies when a German institution invites you. The consulate is in Cape Town centre, so you will need to drive all the way there. Here is a link for the consulate: http://www.kapstadt.diplo.de/Vertretung/kapstadt/en/01/Visabestimmungen/Visabestimmungen.html
For the appointment you will need:
1) Your flight ticket
2) Proof of acceptance by the German institution
3) The letter from Stellenbosch University that awards the travel bursary. I didn’t need my bank statements and I also didn’t have to pay anything either.
4) 1 biometric photo (the photo shops usually know what this is).
5) Medical insurance: Ursula Haque, the EBS Summer school organiser sent a link for this and I bought that for under R400. Travel agents will let you pay about R800, because this will include regular insurance for your luggage, but I didn’t have many valuables so didn’t want that. Medical aids like Discovery also have sufficient coverage, but you will have to phone them and ask them to email you a letter that proves that you have sufficient coverage. If your medical aid tells you that you can only claim medical procedure once you are back in South Africa, then you medical insurance is not sufficient and you will have to buy more – the German consulate demands this.
6) Proof of accommodation.
It took me about 2 days to get my visa. You can either pick it up again in Cape Town or you can have them deliver it for you for about R150.
- Now it’s the fun part. All the people who were attending the EBS summer school could communicate on facebook and we start planning for the weekend travels. We didn’t plan too far in advance, we organised all our train tickets and accommodation for weekend travels when we were all together in Germany, but we ‘googled’ and shared some ideas beforehand.
- Packing: it depends on the travelling that you want to do afterward (because you don’t necessarily want to carry your big travel bag with you wherever you go. In our case, we travelled over the weekends during the EBS summer school 3 days after the summer school was over. I left my big bag at Frankfurt airport luggage storage for those last 3 days, it’s about 5 euro/day. I had my big hard wheel bag for the bulk of my stuff, and a backpack which I used for weekend travels.
Weather-wise we had summery weather with some odd rainy and cold days. Two things that I would recommend taking along are a small umbrella and a warmish raincoat. Also you don’t really need fancy clothing for the welcoming and farewell dinners, they are really informal. Lastly, pack light! And leave space for things you might want to bring back.
Summer School:
Where to start? I will tell you what I experienced, but it might be totally different for you, so don’t make too many assumptions based on what I write here. Here is my experience:
The program
Our program title was: “Doing business in Europe”. The modules we had were quite fitting to this title as it included topics like:
- Consumer behaviour in Europe
- European cultures (really interesting)
- Supply Chain Management
- European tax law (really difficult if you did not have tax as a subject at University)
- German crash course (really cool)
- Business simulation (hard work but you learn a lot)
- Site visits to Opel manufacturing plant , Lufthansa head-courters and EU buildings in Strasbourg (very interesting).
Each module was presented by a different lecturer and they mostly taught me something new, but not always. It is awesome to know that we are pretty much on standard with the rest of the world (most of the time).
We tried to attend all the classes and we got to know our class mates. Also note that you have to pass the course (60% is the pass rate) otherwise you have to pay back the travel bursary the University gives you.
The people
You meet the coolest people. We had students from the following nations on our summer school: Australia, North American, Turkey, China, Singapore, Mexico, Germany, Ireland and England. Most people are busy with their first degrees in some kind of business field. Have a look on facebook, there’s probably already a group for your year’s summer school.
The organisation
Ursula Haque was the organiser of our summer school. She’s awesome. The organisation was really good and the German people were more friendly than I had expected. You can get more information on the EBS as an organisation on the EBS website.
The extra-curricular activities
Activities after class included going out for drinks at interesting places with the class mates, planning weekends and going to or hosting dinner parties at our house. Oestrich-Winkel, where we stayed, is a bit small, so we went to either Wiesbaden (there are nice pubs, restaurants, karaoke bars, a theatre, etc.) or Mainz (there are nice beach bars, local students go there for clubbing, etc.). There is also a place in Wiesbaden where you can do tree-top activities (yes you read right!).
The weekend travels
Travelling on weekends is a must if you can afford it. The cheapest way I know of is by train using a Eurorail ticket. This ticket is obtainable from either Frankfurt Main train station or Frankfurt Airport station. You can check the prices on the internet, but I would recommend you buy it once you are there. We bought a ticket for 3 countries over 6 travel days for about R 2600. Another option (which I didn’t use) is to check for cheap flights with websites like www.skyscanner.net . For this to be really cheap you will probably have to book somewhat in advance, but it might save you some travel time, so it’s worth considering.
We travelled to Prague on our first weekend, which was a long weekend. It was awesome and really something to see. It was about 9 hours by ICE train, but it was worth it. On our way back from Prague we stopped over on Dresden for about 4 hours. This is a beautiful German town with lots of old buildings and tons of history and we were able to see a lot in 4 hours.
On the second weekend we travelled to Berlin. Wow, this is a really interesting, complex, beautiful and difficult-to-describe city. I would like to go there again, because you actually need more than a weekend for Berlin, there is so much to see and experience. The last three days after the summer school, we went to Brussels and Amsterdam. A day is good for Brussels, but more is needed for Amsterdam, because it’s such an interesting city with tons to see like: the Van Gogh and Rijks museums, the Anne Frank house, De Pijp (famous art works in the street) and much more.
Post Summer school:
It was all over so quickly and the return to Stellenbosch happened quite abruptly. I don’t think I will ever be the same again after this experience; this trip has completely changed my frame of reference and my perspective on many things.
Firstly, I realised that we, as South Africans, are not so much left behind as I anticipated, we are actually quite on standard with the rest of the world in terms of general knowledge and academic performance. Also, we are not the only country with problems; most countries have them, it’s just one of those things.
Also it is interesting to compare some aspects of our culture with those of the German culture: South Africans have a lot more of a live-and-let-live mentality. Comparatively we are sometimes a lot less efficient, but a lot less irritable and less unfriendly to new people. The German culture especially, it seems, is governed by many rules (including many unwritten ones) and cultural etiquette. They are sometimes a bit cold towards people they don’t know, but are generally very sociable with people they do know. So don’t expect them to just start talking to you randomly on a train one day.
Other things I realised is just how different a country functions with an advanced infra-structure as the one Germany has, it’s something we as South Africans (and the engineers among us) can learn from and can strive towards. In general, it is refreshing and an immense learning experience just to see how things can be done differently.
In terms of future travels or exchanges I now have a bee-in-my-bonnet to travel again and see all the things that, on this trip, I realised I still want to see and experience. I would love to go on a longer exchange or internship overseas. Three weeks gave me a good glimpse of the German culture, but I think to go on a longer exchange would be even better, as one would see even more of the good and the bad of a country as well as getting a better understanding of a culture as a whole. I think there is so much we can learn from people in the rest of the world and I would be keen to be the person to learn these things and bring them back to South Africa to develop our country.
It really is wonderful that the University encourages and pays for us to do things like this; it’s pretty amazing.