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Tag: Erasmus

  • Party time in Taksim

    Yesterday night we met up with a ‘bunch’ of Erasmus students (30) in the Taksim district of Istanbul for a night out on the town. My roommate and I headed from our dorms to the park, where we went into a cable lift over the park towards Taksim. Once there, I was amazed with how modern everything was. What a lively district! I’d been wondering where all the cool, young people hang out in Istanbul and this is one of the places.

    Taksim’s main square is a popular place for big public events such as New Year’s Eve celebration and parades. It used to be an important center for demonstrations also, but after a few incidents in the sixties and seventies the Turkish government decided to introduce a ban on these demonstrations on the square.

    After meeting up with a few fellow students from Poland and Spain, we decided to head out and grab a bite. We headed down İstiklal Caddesi (Avenue) which is Istanbul’s main shopping streets and is visited by over 3 million people per day during the weekends. In the sidestreets there are many bars and restaurants, but the area also has a lot of other sights to see which you can read about on Wikipedia.

    After having some food, we walked down one of the streets and came past a Nargila place. This traditional waterpipe has been a very important element in the social life of Turkish people over the course of history and they are smoked to socialize. One Nargila, five teas and a water only cost us 11 lira total, which is around 6 or 7 euros. Great stuff!

    Then we headed to a bar about which I won’t speak, because the best thing you can do is just head over to the area yourself one day and explore all that it has to offer. It’s incredibly vibrant, even more so than what I’ve seen in cities like Paris or London!

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  • Homeless

    It’s my last weekend in Holland. This Monday I’m flying to Sofia, Bulgaria, from where I’ll take a bus to go to Istanbul where I will be studying for half a year. Moved out of my apartment last weekend, staying at my parents now, getting ready to stay in a hostel for a while, so I’m officially homeless again. Woohoo! Freedom! 🙂

    Figured I’d deliver an update on some things.

    My visa
    After posting the concerns I had about my visa, I decided to email a friend of mine, Ivaylo, who has a lot of experience with travelling and living abroad. His take on it was that once I get my residence permit, I’ll be a temporary citizen of Turkey, which will thus grant me entry into Turkey. So even though I have a single entry visa, once I get my residence permit I should be set.

    I’ve tried calling the Turkish consulate over the last 2 days to get a confirmation about this, but haven’t been able to get through yet. Once I’m finished with my studies I’m seriously going to consider helping out ministries of foreign affairs around the world to shape up the external communication side of their consulates and embassies, since I have very few very good experiences with consulates or embassies. The only embassies that I dealt with and I’m impressed with is the English embassy in The Netherlands and the Dutch embassy in Bulgaria, though I guess the latter doesn’t have very much to do 😉 (just joking of course).

    Monday morning I’ll get up early to call the consulate, just in case I do need to go to Rotterdam to change my visa, which I don’t expect. If I don’t get through, I could of course take care of it when I’m in Turkey.

    Language course
    I decided that I actually should take part in the language course I blogged about. After posting it here and going through the comments, I figured “why not?” So let’s just do it and see what happens. I emailed them again to double-check if they had seen the email in which I said I would not be attending and to ask whether I could still be part of the course.

    And I can. Cool.

    A place to live
    We set up a group on Facebook which has a big number of the Erasmus students who are going to be doing one or two semesters for an exchange this year. Some of them are already finding apartments and looking for people to come and live there.

    I decided to add everyone to my friends with a small note about the exchange in Istanbul and then get messaging to see if I meet like-minded people to live with, or people who are already looking for an apartment. While doing this, a Turkish girl who studied at the university I’ll be attending (Yeditepe), sent me a link to a consulting company that helps with temporary housing in Turkey. BY Consulting Company‘s site looks promising, but they don’t have anything near my university currently. Maybe if I contact them once I’m in Istanbul I can find out more.

    Turkish hospitality
    Every Turkish person I know or have spoken to through Facebook has been incredibly friendly and from a Dutch perspective are going out of their way to help me out. Offering to hook me up with people in Istanbul who can introduce me to the city, helping me out with ideas for housing, regularly checking on me; I’ve never met a more hospitable people than the Turkish and I haven’t even set foot on Turkish soil yet.

    All worries are gone. Everything will be perfectly okay and will run smoothly. The only thing I worry about now is getting my stuff washed and packing my bag with as much stuff as the airline allows (which is just 20 kilograms). Just 3 more nights in Holland!

  • Erasmus Intensive Language Course… To do or not to do?

    Since I’m going to study at a university in Istanbul through the EU’s Erasmus program, I was allowed to sign up for a (free) Turkish language course under the Erasmus Intensive Language Course (EILC) program. I immediately jumped on it, since it had many other advantages, such as free accommodation at the Istanbul University campus.

    Then I found out that my own university, Yeditepe University, would also be offering Turkish language courses. I found out that the EILC courses overlap with the courses I’m supposed to be following at Yeditepe. Plus, they decided to put us into hostels instead of the campus and we’d have to pay for it ourselves. If I’m going to be in a hostel, I’d like to pick it myself, besides… I’d have enough to do anyway, such as finding an apartment, people to live with and getting myself orientated. So I sent them an email.

    EILC Cancellation Email

    Hi,

    I’d like to inform you by this email that I won’t be able to attend the EILC courses starting this August. It’s a great service, but I’m afraid time won’t allow me to attend a considerable number of the classes, so I feel it’s better for me to withdraw.

    Kind regards,
    Bastiaan
    Student at INHOLLAND Amsterdam/Diemen
    The Netherlands

    Apparently they won’t take no for an answer. As you see I sent this email on July 28 and today I got an email back with an acceptance letter dated August 8.

    This got me thinking… Should or shouldn’t I do the EILC? It will offer me an opportunity to meet Erasmus students from all over the city, going to one out of many universities in Istanbul. Maybe I can team up with some people and find an apartment even. Having said that, I’m sure the hostel will evening clocks and things like that and I really enjoy my freedom.

    If any of you have experience with studying abroad, help me out. When I was living in Sofia, Bulgaria, quite a few of my friends were Erasmus students and they had gone through the EILC course… I must say, I wasn’t very impressed with the level of their Bulgarian. A few were ok, but most hadn’t really learned anything. Compared to most of them, my Bulgarian, that I learned on the street, was better. And learning a language on the street is of course much more exciting than learning it in a classroom or protected environment. 😉

    What are your thoughts on this? Should I remind them I cancelled, or just go to the courses?

  • Rush!

    Letter of Acceptance

    I’ve been officially accepted to Yeditepe! Time to sit back and relax, right? Not.

    Last week: 2 final exams. This week: 1 final exam, 1 deadline for a website, some work assignments. So at this point I was already busy. Anyway, I decided to figure out how I would get my ERASMUS grant. I went to the international office and they informed me I should have my forms in before the 15th of July (I would be in Bulgaria/Macedonia from the 25th of June to the 17th of July), including a certificate of enrollment for the NEXT study year. I handed my enrollment in last Friday and was going on holiday this Saturday, so that got me quite stressed.

    “No worries, mate” I told myself. I figured I’d just take care of something that I could take care of immediately. I googled a bit to find out more about the Turkish embassy in Holland and visa. The embassy site was nearly completely in Turkish, but I found a number and called them. After passing through 2 rude receptionists and being connected to a person, I was informed that I should not call her but someone asked and she asked me why I called her. I blamed television and she gave me the number of the Turkish consulate. I called the consulate, had to go through the same annoying type of receptionists and finally got someone who knew anything about what I was asking. Turns out the studentvisum for Turkey is… 446 euros! Awesome. Perfectly reasonable to ask from a student, right?

    More stress.

    Then I did something I should do more often before asking stuff to people who don’t really know the answer either. I used my eyes and applied them to some text. I did some reading. I saw I could get an advance on the Erasmus grant, which meant I could probably use that money to pay for the visum. Also, I got in contact with the central international office of my degree factory (commercial university) and found out my enrollment for this year would be enough.

    Last time I had stress relief like this I decided it would be best not to blog about it. So I won’t.

    Nervewrecking stuff if you’re going on a holiday for a month in just a few days. Anyway, it all seems to be okay now. Still nervous about the visum, since I’d rather not borrow money for it, but we’ll see. Let’s hope the woman was confused and told me the normal or work visum instead of a studentvisum. Not counting on it though. The very worst is that I will have to go visit the consulate which is built in Holland’s pit of doom, Rotterdam. Lord, help me :sad:

    Oh! So I’m going on a holiday this Wednesday. Expect to see many stories and pictures! :cool:

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