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.
Category: Semester Exchange Postings
Blog Postings by Returning Stellenbosch University Students
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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.