Erasmus Survival Guide - part 1/2

Survival guide

Being six times with Erasmus is not easy trust me, i am literally on the road since i was 19 years old. I never get to stay at home, in Romania, more than two months per year, sometimes i complain sometimes i did not want to return and once i a while i remember all the memories from all this experiences. Erasmus life is not easy for sure, challenges on the way, real world and good and bad people, that's why i think i am experienced enough to tell you guys or actually just lay out there some tips in case you are getting ready to become an Erasmus student.

I gather some tips along the way and now i want to share with you how i got throw all my six Erasmus adventures and also i will try to post some useful Turkish beginner words and phrases for those who plan to go to Turkey. I cannot say my Turkish is perfect but i am here more than one year so you like it or no i have to learn it, but more later!

For this particular post i also interviewed 2 of my Erasmus friends, Olzhas from Kazakhstan and Petru from Moldova, they shared with me some useful tips and i write it down on on the paper ready to share with you guys. So let's get started won't we!?

Erasmus tips:

1. Always travel with a friend

What i have learned almost from beginning of my Erasmus experiences is always to go on this adventures with a friend or a colleague or just anther student from your university.

It is tremendously important you are joined by someone, in my first 4 times i always went with my colleague and friend Peter and it was so easy and made my time so much comfortable and i was not so much home sick. We helped each other a bunch and we always supported each other whenever the other was feeling down. Plus for example when the other person had financial issues or something like that we always jump and help each other which is very important you have this type of person near you.

In my 4th Erasmus in Portugal i went with Peter and this time around i got to bring also my best friend, we signed up for a second master just in order to go together somewhere, this was our dream. Said and done in no time we were in Airport straight to Porto. I always felt i am so lucky traveling with my 2 best friends. But at the end of the day it can be a good thing or an absolute worse. Me and Peter we still keep in touch but me and Cristina no, i guess this time together ended our relation and there i no turn from that. But at the end of the day if i have to choose again i will still do thing the same way and i will never choose by any means to travel alone, i think this was the thing that kept me sane!

This is a picture from my my Erasmus in Portugal from left to right Cristina up, down Peter, middle Muhammet and me.

2. Travel to other cities

For me the most important thing when i am doing Erasmus is always to travel and visit the best cities in that country or why not the closest countries after the border. I am so mad on people who for example go in Erasmus and decide either to make economy and not spend a dime and just basically survive and just sit in one city until their time is over, i mean come on live a little don't care about money go check other places make an idea about what this country has to offer.

Sometimes you are not so fortunate to have the choice to choose an amazing Erasmus destination because let's be serious most of the places suck completely you either are send in a capital city which is rare or either are in the most small city in the country just because it has this amazing university. In my case my last 2 Erasmus now in Elazig was the most not original and not touristic places, to be honest the city is the worst in the country meaning has no foreigners no visitors and no tourism. But this is not an end learn from me from this useful tips:

• Research before where you are about to go, everything from places to visit, restaurants to eat and all the cool places to hang out
• Make a list with what you want to visit inside that city and work on that
• Make another list for what is the top destinations in that country and what is worth visiting
• Put some money on the side just for traveling
• Find some cool people to hang out especially if they are from that country.

Whenever i go first to a new city or country i am always so anxious in to visit al the museums and historical places, is what i do and no even one Erasmus hold me down, even if my money was short i still spend them all on traveling. I always say this to myself '' the money goes but the memories stays ''.

I always spend all my Erasmus money just on trips and i never looked back, those who don't visit other places are stupid yes and shout out to a girl she's coming back to Elazig her 4th time and she still didn't visit Istanbul or other amazing places, you are dumb girl bottom line!

3. Never choose same university or country once you go second time.

As i said above how stupid can you be to go in the same place twice or third, oh my God, even if my first Erasmus experience in Diyarbakir was amazing and my second in Malta was the best i still would not return back if i have the chance of another Erasmus. No way, why should i return when i have the chance to visit new country, new places, new culture. In life you never know how many chances you have to visit new countries so always make the best out of it no matter what.

I can understand this feeling of being comfortable in one place and make friends but sometimes you may need to step out of your comfort zone and do exactly the opposite. You will be surprised how it works.

4. That love hate relationship with the roommates

We all have on time in our lives that one roommate that we love to hate, but in Erasmus it may work different. Sometimes you are lucky to get your own room in the apartment, other time it means you may need to share you room with strangers or even so your apartment. I had 2 different situations, first one in Greece when i was doing my internship i had to share a small apartment with 3 Ukrainian girls and my room with one of them. They stole from me 3 golden necklaces so i will never trust this type of persons anymore, in this case if you need to share the room with always keep you best assets like money, phone, documents close to you or in a good hiding spot, even if you trust that person 100% never get to comfortable.

And my second example it was in Portugal last year when i shared a villa with 7 other students from different countries and also this one did not went well. I shared my room with my best friend Cristina so it was good for us but we always had disagreements with the other students, screaming and waiting our turn for the bathroom is really hard.

My advice to you should be always choose the best accommodation and if you have no choice or is not up to you then be very careful about your belongings.

5. Portion you money

For those who live on a student budget like me and sometimes their parents cannot provide extra financial support there is a method on how you can survive the Erasmus experience.

Usually everybody is getting 500 euros for studies right?! so let's take this example and i will show you how i portion my money.

500 euro montly budget :

• for example 200 euro rent
• 100-200 euro monthly groceries
• 100 euro for going out or visit new places

But this is a tricky thing because Erasmus provides 80% of the total grant before you go so for example on a 500 euro plus 4 months it's 2000 euros with 400 euros gap on those 20%, so you get 1600 euros cash so in this case you may have different approach :

• keep around 800 euros for rent ( depends now of course how much it will be, sometimes is more than 200 or less)
• around 400 for food
• and the rest of 400 is your pocket money ( traveling, shopping, clubbing etc. )

I always consider going in a much not touristic city rather than a big metropolitan city, it is way cheaper so you can afford more things. For example as i was doing my Erasmus in Diyarbakir in Turkey my best friend Nimrod he was in Istanbul. I managed to survive with my all grant for the entire period when he spend all after 1 month or so and them his mom always send him money. So be smart go for smaller cities and them you can visit others no problem.

6. Ge a part time job

My time with internship in Malta was pretty hard financially speaking. During my 8 month period working at this company i found for my internship they did not pay me at all and for those who don't know Malta is more or less like Monaco, very small and very pricey, so life can be pretty hard there when you are on a student budget. The rent was 300 euros per month and we only got 500 per month from Erasmus because this was 2012 and they still didn't raised it to 700 euros which is now. Under absolutely no way i could have survived with this money so i had to get a part time job, me and Peter as well.

We were lucky to found very easy and soon a job throw a friend of this company we were interns. So in no time we were working 2 jobs, the intern job and the part time job which was 4 hours per day at about 200 euros per week more or less. He payd us by hour. It was not easy managing 2 jobs daily but we had no other option and at the end it all worked out for the best.

So just in case you are short with the money don't hesitate to search for a part time, it will help you and why not maybe you will love it.

More tips coming in the second part of the blog post and i am waiting also the guys who helped me with ideas so they will come and i can take some snaps with them and post it so you can see them.

Meanwhile as i promised in the beginning i will share a few useful words in Turkish for the newcomers, just basic words which i am always using and had to learn.

Let's start with :

• Hello - Merhaba
• Good morning - Gunaydin
• Good night - Iyi geceler
• How are you - Nasilsin
• I am good/fine - Iyiyim
• Thank you - Tesekkur ederim
• Where are you from? - Nerelisin?
• I am from Romania -Romanya liyim
• Yes - Evet No - Hayir
• Please - Lutfen
• Welcome -Hosgeldiniz
• Thank you for having me - Hosbulduk
• How much cost? - Ne kadar?
• You speak English? - Sen ingilizce konus?
• No, i don't speak Turkish - Turkce bilmiyorum
• I don't know - Bilmiyorum

I think that's enough words to remember and trust me you don't need more than this. Turkish language has their own special dialects and own alphabet so forgive me i i skipped an accent or two.

Shout out to my boyfriend Muhammet who has no interest in teaching me Turkish so it's been a hard year but not yet impossible.

I hope for all of you who reads my post it will be useful information and stay tune for the second part with more tips and advice .

Photo gallery