I arrived in Frankfurt at approximately 7 am on a Monday morning in January, I had just gotten married 9 days earlier in South Africa. For the European Business School, which was the university at which I would be spending a semester, this was the start of their Spring term. The weeks leading up to my departure were difficult not least because of all the wedding planning, but mostly due to the fact that I had applied for a long stay visa at the German embassy in Cape Town and this particular visa took a long time to process. The fact that I applied just before the festive season meant that the many public and religious holidays as well as the opening and closing of the university itself during this period created an administrative nightmare, which delayed my application.
Author: Sarah
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Wicus in Zurich
Planning and the first month:
Friedrich Kreuser and I are currently on exchange in Switzerland at the University of Zürich (UZH). Before departure, we obviously had to go through all the normal steps: get a visa, check whether we require vaccinations, book a flight, inform my bank that I will be in a different country and find out what the costs of transactions will be and so on. I don’t know anything about visas, but I have found that on the two trips which I have made to Europe that Pick n Pay travel offered the lowest prices on flights. You can find them at http://www.pnptravel.co.za/. I also use only my credit cards when travelling overseas and withdraw cash upon arrival at the nearest ATM. There is always an ATM at the airport, so exchanging money before hand is not really necessary, although it is safe.
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Caru in Austria
Caru attended the Graz International Summer School Seggau 2014; here is her story.
Pre-departure:
It is every South African student’s dream to go and study abroad. Unfortunately it is also every student’s reality that for South Africans this is nearly impossible. Our currency is too weak, our government does not give many scholarships and our educational system is completely different to those of European or American schools. However, I saw this near impossibility become a reality when I started researching summer schools to attend at partner institutions of the University of Stellenbosch. I sent in my video after a frustrating week of trying to find a quiet place to film in Stellenbosch. When I saw how many mistakes had been made in my video and how many students had entered, my heart sank in my shoes when I realized my chances were about as much as finding water in the Kalahari Desert.
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