Advertisement
Published: September 5th 2015
After a great internship in Paris it's time for my next adventure! This time with a good friend, Yoran. From September until February we will be studying and living in Palma de Mallorca. In this first blogpost I'll tell you about the whole process of searching a room, arranging the Erasmus grant and my first experience in Palma, enjoy!
Application process As a part of our studies International Business and Languages Yoran and I had to study a year abroad to develop our cultural awareness and to learn Spanish. Already in November/December 2014 we had to choose three universities where we'd like to go study. We both really liked Palma and heard good stories of this university so this became our first preference. After two months we got an email from the Hanze University that we'd been accepted and placed at the Universidad de las Islas Baleares (UIB) in Palma! At that time we were still in Hamburg (Yoran) and Paris for our internship abroad so we had to arrange a lot of things while still living abroad.
After getting the acceptance from the UIB we applied for the semester in Palma by signing up
for courses and sending a letter of interest. After this was approved by the UIB and the Hanze we started searching for rooms in Palma and filing out the Erasmus forms in order to get the Erasmus Grant for studying abroad. If you're ever going to study abroad, make sure to get this fixed as soon as possible since it'll take some time before you'll get the grant (has to be signed by both universities, you have to take a language test etc.).
Finding a room Meanwhile we were looking for a nice appartment in Palma via
www.enalquiler.com. We could also apply for a room at the campus of the UIB but the campus is not in the city center and rather expensive compared to a room in the city center.
After sending more than 30 e-mails for a nice appartment for the two of us on which we got around 5 replies, we decided to ask a few other students from our year who studied at the UIB one semester earlier. Via them we got in touch with a local real-estate agent who found us two rooms in a nice shared appartment in the
city center for only €270 a month. We would be sharing the appartment with 4 other people who work or study in Palma. After getting no further replies on appartments for the two of us, we decided to go for this appartment.
Packing up for Palma Quickly after the contract was signed for the room, we booked the flight for Palma on the first of September with Ryanair flight FR6218 from Weeze to Palma de Mallorca.
Next difficulty: Packing your stuff for 5 months abroad.... Since winter's in Palma are quite cold (around 10-15°C) I had to pack some wintherclothing aswell as summerclothing. Ofcourse not everything fitted in the one suitcase I wanted to use so at the last day I booked an extra piece of luggage for the flight.
After saying goodbye to everyone my dad brought me to the airport where I met Yoran, ready for our trip to Palma!
Arrival in Palma Sun, see and beach! 😉 That's what we were thinking, until we landed while it was raining... When we arrived in the appartment we got to know our roommates. A Mexican guy and a Bulgarian
girl. They seem very nice but we still have to get to know eachother since it's been only 4 days now. The other two roommates are arriving a little later.
After we decorated our rooms we went to the supermercado for our first groceries, luckily the prices here are quite the same as in the Netherlands. For me everything was cheap since I was used to the prices in Paris...
The second day we went to the beach since that was the only day this week that the weather was nice. Yesterday (4/9) there were thunderstorms all day with hailstones with the size of ping pong balls.
Tonight we'll go out so we have to buy us some beer! I'll post another update next week, after we've had our introduction at the UIB! 😊
Hasta Luego!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.09s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 10; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0456s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Johan en Coby
non-member comment
Qué lo pase bien!
Wat leuk dat je een blog gaat bijhouden! We hopen dat jullie een hele leuke tijd krijgen in Palma. En natuurlijk de mooie spaanse taal beter gaan leren. Heerlijk om je straks even op te zoeken. Kunnen we kijken waar jullie de komende 5 maanden verblijven. Nogmaals veel plezier op het prachtige eiland Mallorca! Liefs Johan en mama