Pre-departure:
You are reading this probably because you are interested in going to France’s EM Strasbourg Business School in France or because you have been accepted to go. If you have been accepted, I would like to congratulate you! This journey will be an amazing experience and you remember it for your lifetime. Going overseas is something really big, it takes a lot of planning to do. Thus, I strongly recommend that you get all admin, tickets, visa applications, cash exchange sorted out as soon as possible.
After being accepted to summer school, the next step would be to book your flight ticket. I advise that you first surf on the net for the cheapest prices before enquiring at any travel agency. I took a flight from Cape Town to Paris, which then from Paris, I caught the high-speed train (TGV) to Strasbourg. Keep in mind that I bought the train tickets from Paris to Strasbourg in advance. From Strasbourg’s train station, you can choose to use the summer school’s pick-up service or arrange your own transport to the residence, if you choose to use the pick-up service, you should either be picked up by Daniela or Jordis, who are the co-ordinators of the summer school.
Visa applications may take from a few days to a few weeks to arrive after applying for it. I was lucky enough to not have to apply for a visa as having a Taiwanese Passport exempted me from the visa requirement, but I do recommend you to apply for it as soon as you have your flight ticket.
Before you leave, remember to exchange money from rands to euros. It will be more expensive to exchange at the airport, so it is better to exchange it beforehand. I exchanged cash from rands to euros and also applied for a cash passport at the bank. With the cash passport, you can transfer money into the card and then use it overseas.
Some important items to take with:
- Umbrella
- French Dictionary (check for apps on the phone)
- Electrical adaptors
- Student card
- Stationary and writing pads
- Spare passport photos, copies of important documents (e.g. passport) and also saving it in your email or Drop Box
It is a good idea to plan ahead your trips for the weekend, as bus or train tickets are much cheaper when they are bought earlier. However, it is also important that you do not book away all your weekends, you will meet people from all over the world at this summer school, and it would be great fun to travel around together with them.
Experience at the Summer School:
The co-ordinators showed us our resident rooms once we arrived in Strasbourg. I stayed in a double-room which was made up of a bedroom with two single beds, a bathroom, a small kitchen and a living room with tables, chairs and a green couch. In the bedrooms, the following are supplied: a blanket, bed sheet and a cushion-like pillow. In the kitchen, the following are supplied: cutlery, chef knives, scissors, chopping board and pots. Some rooms have more kitchen supplies than others, thus borrowing from neighbours is sometimes needed. Surprisingly, Europeans are not used to using the kettle to boil water for drinking, instead they buy bottled water from supermarkets, so you will not be able to find a kettle in any of the rooms.
Just one street behind the residence (i.e. La Marne Residence) is a supermarket named ‘Simply’, where you can do your grocery shopping at. On every Tuesday and Saturday mornings, there is also a market right across the street from the residence. Most supermarkets, shopping malls, pharmacies, shops and pastry stores are closed on a Sunday, thus it is essential to plan ahead to ensure that there is sufficient food for you to get through Sunday. However, restaurants will still be open on a Sunday.
At first it was daunting to use the public transport (i.e. tram), but it ended up being not as bad as I’d imagined it to be. As long as you know which tram to take (i.e. Lines A, B, C, D and E) and in which direction you want to go. Remember to also validate your tram ticket before getting onto the tram otherwise you could get a fine of 49 euros! Validating the ticket just means that the time and date is printed onto the tram ticket. There are validation machines at every tram station.
The summer school was made up of a diverse group of people from all over the world. There were people from:
- Argentina
- Australia
- Pakistan
- Russia
- South Africa
- Spain
- United kingdom
- United States
- Vietnam
There are three subjects on this summer school course: Business in Europe, European Integration and French. There is a division of two groups for French (Beginners and Intermediates), you will be divided into one of the groups depending on your French level. A few tasks and assignments are required to be completed but the workload is regarded as manageable, and are either individual or group work. Summer school classes are longer than classes at Stellenbosch University, most classes are three hours with only one break in between. Most classes start at 8:30 or 9:00 and most end at 16:00 or 18:00.
Good thing about classes is that they end early on Friday’s, which provides extra time to explore and travel around. I had tried to travel to different cities every weekend, in which I travelled to places such as Kehl (+/- 30-40 minutes’ walk from Strasbourg), Colmar, and Zurich. Travelling to different countries in Europe is easy as buses and trains are convenient transportations there.
All museums are free on the first Sunday of the month, this includes climbing up to the top of the Cathedral, which is definitely worth the climb up. The sun only sets at around 21:30 in Strasbourg and is a relatively safe city. I recommend you to make use of every opportunity to explore around!
Return:
The last few days before returning home was a mixture of feelings, a mixture between sadness and happiness. Happy because it would be great to see family and friends again and to share with them about the stories and events that had happened abroad. While being overseas, what I had missed about home was the friendliness of South Africans, and then also getting to eat proper home-cooked meals. It was also sad knowing that I would be leaving a really beautiful country so very soon and not knowing when I would get the chance to come back here again.
After spending a month in Strasbourg, and getting to meet people from all parts of the world, it made me realize that this summer school was only a peek into the bigger picture, there is so much more places to visit and so many more things to learn, as the world is a huge place with so much diversity.
I learnt that it is important to be able to work well together with people of the same culture but even more essential to work together with people of different cultures, especially once we complete our degrees at university and enter the workplace, we will have to work with all kinds of people. I believe that this experience had helped me to have a better understanding of people from other cultures.
I am truly thankful towards Stellenbosch University for giving us students the opportunity to travel to another country and attend summer school to meet people from all over the world. This trip has allowed me to develop an increase in academic knowledge, develop my social skills, broaden my language skills, learn to be more independent, allowed me to make new friends, and enriched me with an international experience. It was a great honour to be granted this opportunity to travel to France to attend the summer school of EM Strasbourg Business school. Traveling abroad on this trip has definitely provided experiences and memories that will last me a lifetime.