Visiting your friends on exchange

G'day from der Schweiz. I'm currently living in Zürich (Switzerland) on exchange during my 3rd year, 2nd Semester. This little blog post will be a run-through of my travels thoughts, so hopefully it'll help you out in your exchange planning and when you get overseas. 

I'll give you a little summary of my travels first. I dipped out of Australia straight after my exams, on June 20th, giving myself just under 3 months of traveling until my pre-semester German class started on the 4th of September. Note; some Uni's start late August, some start early October, so you can get heaps of time to travel if you pick well. I went around France solo for 2 weeks, met my Family to travel Ireland and the UK for 4 weeks, met other ANU mates also on exchange in the Balkans for 2 weeks, and finished off with 2 weeks in Portugal and Spain. Great times. Super fun.  

BUT, some of the best travel times I had was through the semester. This is where some advice comes in. If you have other friends on exchange around you, go and visit them. There are 2 main reasons that come to mind with this. Firstly, getting to experience another culture / country with someone who has already built up a bit of experience in the area is great. I'd definitely extend this to travelling the home countries of your new mates you'll meet on exchange as well. I went to Berlin, Paris, Manchester and Dublin to visit Australian friends, spent NYE in country-side Belgium with my mate from there, and hosted a few people in Zürich as well. If you're planning on doing the same big stint of 'touristy' travel as I did before classes, you'll cherish some more authentic experiences. This is the perfect way to do it. It can also be a fair bit cheaper too. 

I don't think I had thought about the second reason before I left home for exchange. You're going to miss being around other Australians. I remember sitting in the info session at ANU where they showed the curve depicting exactly when you'll feel homesick and thinking - 'no chance'... mate, such a chance! My particular experience was living in a country where the most spoken language around me wasn't English. It was Swiss-German, then German, then French, then Italian, and then maybe English. Even though practically everyone in the city spoke English, I felt really removed from everything and a bit isolated. You may or may not end up in this situation too. If you do, then get out and visit some Australians! My mood lifted immediately after booking my first trip to see a friend. 

Please don't let this deter you from going to a country where you don't speak the first language though. Exchange is a fantastic opportunity to throw yourself in the deep end in this regard, but it isn't a bad or uncommon thing to need to retract yourself from the situation to reset. 

Some final travel tips for while you're away: 

1.  Assess the locality of your country; 

2. Assess the prices of flights out of and into your country 

3. Which semester you are there, for which season the bulk of your holidays.

4. Finances, and what your mentality is. Mine was 'you can make your money back later', and even though everyone is in different situations, I implore you to  make the most of being there!

5. Experiencing the best of your local country, or gallivanting all over your region?