A Blog about Education Abroad

Tag: Belgium

  • Marsy at KU Leuven

    Marsy at KU Leuven

    Tussen die boeke en die biere    

    Before you jet off:

    This will be a trip of a lifetime, so a bit of paperwork, is nothing to complain about.  Firstly,  it’s the dreaded Visa application.  Arriving early at the consulate goes without saying, but to strengthen this recommendation consider the following:  The Cape Town’s Belgium consulate has only two administrative personnel handling the visa applications and there is no appointment system in place.  Thus if you arrive to find Soccer mom and her gremlins in the waiting area you will have to wait while each of their applications and scans are done.

    If you forgot something or you are still waiting for a confirmation letter from a third party, just ask them if you can e-mail that later. They will normally let you do this while just filing your application under incomplete.  Then you don’t have to go hurtling into that slow-moving Cape Town traffic twice.

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  • Jacomine at the University of Antwerp

    Jacomine at the University of Antwerp

    The final weeks leading up to my departure to Antwerp were jam-packed, exciting and emotional. At first it seemed like the Visa application was the most difficult part of the process, but I soon discovered that packing was. Packing for 6 months with a limited weight of 33kg can be challenging. Not knowing what necessities your room will be equipped with on your arrival was rather scary. My tip would be to always pack less and remember that almost everything you need can be bought or borrowed.

    And so the day of my departure finally arrived. The fact that I was leaving for six months had not sunk in until I was sitting at the boarding terminal. It was emotional saying bye to my family, but I had forgotten the power of technology (Skype) and how it can shorten distances! After a long flight I finally arrived in Brussels where I took a train to Antwerp. From there I could have walked to my accommodation but my bags were far too heavy and so I took a cab.

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  • Anke at the University of Antwerp

    Anke at the University of Antwerp

    Preparing for take off:

    How I envy some of my fellow classmates with duel citizenship or European passports. When preparing to travel abroad you realize how much admin your green book can cause you (not even to mention the embarrassing awkward school photo). One of a few things you need for a Belgium Student Visa is police clearance. This document can be obtained from your local police station and indicates that you are not a smooth criminal. After getting all ten fingerprints, and two hand-prints (Yes, I also didn’t know that existed) done, your file must be couriered to Pretoria for authorization. Plan enough time for this as a lot can go wrong. In my case my first police clearance got lost somewhere on the way to Pretoria. It had to be reissued and re-couriered. When receiving this long awaited A4 sheet I was naturally ecstatic. The Belgian embassy would not accept this official police document (with the official SAPD stamp) unless it was apostilled by DIRCO (This means that another officer must say that the officer who signed the certificate is legitimate). Of course, this can also only be done in Pretoria. Some lessons thus far: do not to count your chickens before they hatch and make sure you build good relations with the courier service as you might need them a lot – we where lucky third time round.

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