The experience in Europe during the last five months could hardly be described in a few paragraphs. The days in Europe are the most unforgettable memories I have ever had and I will definitely revisit there in the future. I don’t want you to be too jealous but let me just show you some of the most exciting moments I had in Europe.
Study
The Bocconi University in which I stayed during my exchange semester enjoys great reputation for its MBA courses which could rank top 3 in Europe. As a result, the university has many courses linked to the real business world rather than just theoretical study. For example, I chose “Private Equity and Venture Capital”, “Investment Banking” and “Advanced Financial Statement Analysis” which I think would do good to my future career. The university provides us with a free study environment as there were no signing up and no compulsory homework. Students could choose from taking both midterm exam and final exam or just final exam. There are even several final exams to choose from. It is considerably helpful to students who are doing internships. What impressed me most is the quality of their teaching, it is often the case that there are two professors teaching one course and during which time, they would invite several guest speakers who are doing business in this field. For example, in my Investment Banking course, our professor invited CEO of Goldman sachs and the Founder of IMF to talk with us.
Food
Italy is the origin country of all European food with food exports account for a large proportion of all the exports of Italy. The well-known name of Italian food includes pizza, pasta, risotto, spaghetti and all kinds of deserts, coffee and ice cream or gelato in Italian. I was also very fond of the French food and the Spanish food, they could be very tasty as well as quite good looking. Even though those food are so good, I began missing Chinese cuisine only one month after I arrived in Milan. I started to practice cooking for myself using materials bought at supermarket and tried to bring back my familiar Chinese taste.
Traveling
It is said that one should do two things in his life. To fall in love with someone without fear and to travel within short notice. I’m glad for myself that I fulfilled both goals before my 25th birthday. As an old Chinese saying goes: ”It is better to travel ten thousand miles than to read ten thousand books”. Travel is another way of learning if not better. Many foreign students even take a gap year after high school to relax themselves and experience a different culture before they go to college. Luckily, there is no better place in the world than Europe where you could see such a variety of cultures. In Europe, different languages are just like different dialects in China. As a result, English became my mother tongue in Europe. Fortunately, the young people in Europe are generally well educated and I could communicate with them easily in English except proudly French speakers who unwillingly speak English.
Traveling in Europe is definitely an unforgettable experience I’ve ever had. Because I decided to take only the final exam, I had a vacation for almost a month during the Easter break. I made full use of it and planned a route across Europe. Starting from Milan, Italy, I took the train to Zurich, Swiss, and then city after city, I traveled across the European continent. I paid a visit to 15 cities in Germany, France, Luxembourg, Spain, Belgium, Holland and Greece. I visited both tourist sites and historical sites, walked through museums after museums, churches after churches
till I was so tired to move on.
As I booked my flight tickets, accommodations before I took off, my schedule was quite fixed. However, my foreign friends seemed to make no plans at all! They would stay as long as they wanted at one place before traveling to another location and many of them were much younger than I was. I admired their courage and free spirit and as my days on the way lasted, I found sometimes it’s better that way. In fact, in the last trip before I went back to China, I acted just like them and traveled as I wished. With the help of many iPhone apps such as Google maps, everything went well during my journey.
The beauty of travel lies in that you could run into different people. During my train trip from Cologne to Luxemburg, I ran into a stranger when we were both stuck in the train station in the middle of the night and out in the middle of nowhere, we became friends with no secrets. Although German train has a good reputation for its punctuality, I met the very moment of its delay. The trip was scheduled with two transfers and the train was delayed at the first stop and further delayed at the second stop and by the time I was going to take last round of the trip, it was already midnight, 2 hours later than expected in the unknown train station at the border of Germany. As I looked around, there are only 3 men waiting for the next train. At first I didn’t know when and which platform to go to, I was much worried because if I missed the train clearly I would have to stay here for the night. Luckily, one man sitting on the bench apparently noticed my embarrassment and it turned out he would be on the same train. I thanked him and we chatted to idle time away. He told me that he was a designer who were in charge of the BMW center I visited a few days ago in Munich and that he was designing a similar show center for Hyundai at Seoul. What a small world! Another wonderful experience was that I met with three business women who were traveling in Germany to attend the industrial fair while we were waiting for the train to Schloss Neuschwanstein, a must be sightseeing in Munich. They told me about the hardships they went through while starting up a company. I told them about my university, my exchange experience and they gave me much precious advice on my future career. I still kept in touch with them after they went back home and I learned a lot from them.
If you asked me what I got or learned from this exchange experience, I would tell you that I became a better man. After my stay abroad, I became more independent, more confident and most of all, I acquired inner peace and tranquility.
By Chenchen Ding from 2011 Master Program of WISE.
