Most of us have not been study abroad before or at least be in a foreign country for 6 months without our family. The following is some useful tips from my experience to help smoothen the hectic experience you will need to face once you arrive in a new country:
- Exchange your Euro
Before you even reach the airport, make sure you have a small amount of Euro with you! Exchange them ahead of time at your local bank for a better exchange rate and smaller transaction fee.
I understand where parents are coming from when they don’t want the students to carry too much cash with them while traveling. You will still need to survive the days between the German bank account is set up and the money to be transferred internationally. Unlike the United States, most places in Europe preferred cash over credit cards, so only carry credit card won’t get you very far when you are in Germany.
Carry a small amount of cash for the bus tickets and lunches at the sandwich shop, so you won’t need to run around looking for a ATM (or borrow money from a stranger).
MAKE SURE WHEN YOU EXCHANGE YOUR MONEY, GET A MIX OF SMALL AND LARGE NOTES!
- Notify your credit card company to put a travel notice
This is a must when you are traveling to a foreign country for a long period of time. Credit card company will suspend the card if they see any unusual transaction activity (transaction in a foreign country) because it might be a credit card fraud. In order to unsuspend your credit card, student will need to take time out of their busy schedule (Believe me, you will not want to take any time out of your first couple of weeks in exchange to make those long, annoying phone call). Your phone plane abroad is definitely not as good as the one we usually have so you won’t want to waste your minute/money on those phone calls that you can totally avoid by calling ahead of time.
Also when you call the credit card company, make sure you also tell them the countries you are interested in travel so they can include those places when they are putting down the travel notice for you to avoid any further troubles.
- Bring a set of travel size shampoo, body wash, toothpaste, toothbrush
It might sound silly for you to bring travel size shampoo and body wash on your 6 months trip. Many people would just not bring any and buy them once you reach Germany. I am not telling you to just use the travel size shampoo and body wash for your entire semester abroad, you certainly need to buy more of those once you reach Germany. (Don’t give German a bad impression of American by not showering, that would just be disgusting.) The moment you landed Germany, there would be a list of things you need to accomplished within the first day. By the time you finish taking care of those business, it would be night time already. After a long hectic day and 8-hour international flight, you would want to take a nice hot shower to end your day. By the way, there’s not a lot of 24-hours CVS type of stores for you to go to when you realized that you taking had the chance to buy any of the stuff. You don’t want to end your first night abroad in a foreign country that you were preparing to go to for the longest time ever in a bad mood.
Even if you didn’t need to use any of them for your first day, you can always bring them for your weekend trips (too many weekends for you to go on trips!), so they will never be a wasted!
- Bring your winter jacket and different type of clothing
I checked the weather for Mannheim when I was packing my clothes, it doesn’t seem to be too cold as compared to the typical New England weather that we have all experienced. I only brought a lot of my sweaters and thin jackets for my time abroad. It was the biggest mistake I have ever made from all the things that I did to prepare for my sweater abroad. It is true that the weather in Mannheim is not as cold as New England (It still hasn't snowed here...which I kinda missed the snow), it is so cold here. I will also like to blame the horrible heating we have here in Mannheim as compared to the one we have in UMass or at home. As someone who is super lazy and drive down the street instead in the winter, walking around the city of Mannheim in the winter was the most upsetting things I had the do in Mannheim.
You will need to bring your winter jacket, because you might want to travel to a cooler countries which it is useful to have instead of spending a lot of money for a new winter jacket. I ended up buying a new winter jacket in Mannheim because it was too cold for me and I just don’t want to get sick. If you are expecting to be buying new jackets when you reach Mannheim, then don’t pack your jacket because it takes out a lot of space (We all understand and won’t be telling our parents that ;))
Also need to bring different type of clothing, all the different weekend trips and spring break that you will be gone for would require different type of clothing. Even though you are only going for six months, you will want to make sure you have the appropriate clothing for different weather.
- Bring at least one outlet adapter
Beside the shampoo and body wash, it should be one of those objects that you will needed the most for your first night abroad. After a long day after you finished checking in and setting up the bank account, you would probably want to charge your laptop after you Netflix for a little while because you are still really awake from the time difference it has from Boston, or charge your phone because you need to set an alarm clock for you to get up in time to for the first day of Winter Academy. The one outlet adapter would let you still connected with family and friends back home or the new friends that you just met in Manheim. Having the one adapter would also allow you to be connect with the outside world (We all know how insecure we feel when our phones are dead) until you have the time to go to the store to purchase extra adapter for your other electronic.
If you don’t want your families to worry about you or not be able to call / iMessage / Facetime / Skype / WhatsApp / GroupMe / Gchart you, then it is for your best interest to bring at least one outlet adapter.
