Erasmate Recommendations

Right on time for the start of the new academic year, we are happy to announce an increasing number of universities and institutions that recommend Erasmate. Next to the already more than 20 universities across Europe, who trust Erasmate’s service, an additional 6 institutions are now officially recommending Erasmate.

We will be glad to help students from the universities in Bonn/Germany, Tallinn/Estonia, Vienna/Austria and Zurich/Switzerland find a room for the Erasmus year 2010/2011. In addition, we will help the incoming and outgoing students of the Studentenwerk Freiburg/Germany and the Erasmus Student Network (ESN) Twente with finding accommodation anywhere in Europe.

Have a look which other universities recommend Erasmate.

For all Interns and Erasmus students in Madrid

Erasmates, readers, friends!

One of our readers and users of Erasmate.com, Britt, was so kind to share the following information on Madrid with us:

As you know, Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3,3 million; the entire population of the metropolitan area is calculated to be nearly 6 million. Madrid is located on the river Manzanares in the centre of both the country and the Community of Madrid.  As the capital of Spain, Madrid is also the political centre of the country.

According to the Monocle magazine Madrid is the 10th most liveable city in the world. While the city has a modern infrastructure, it has preserved the look and feel of many of its historic neighbourhoods and streets.

The best known landmarks of the city:            

• The Royal Palace
• The Royal Theatre
• The Retiro Park
• The National Library
• The Prado Museum
• The Museum of National Arts, Reina Sofia
• The Thyssen Museum

Maybe you think that the city is very old-fashioned, but the culture aspects described before are very interesting. In one or two days you can visit many museums, most of them for free, where you can see various kinds of art. Madrid is also known by the highly developed architecture, with many different styles.

If you have finished your cultural trips in Madrid, you can start shopping. The city has several districts with their own shopping character. The most expensive one is the district of Salamanca, a luxurious area with exclusive boutiques. There you can find Gucci, Prada, Dior, Armani and so on. Also some small real Spanish boutiques are to be found in this area.

Another well-known area is Chueca, the gay-neighbourhood. Here you can find all types of shops, for him and her. This district is leaded by gays, but also for hetero people a cool area. The prices vary from very low to very high and especially shoes are easy to be found.

Gran Via may be the most famous street of Madrid. Here you can find many shops as well. It is an extremely busy area, with many cars and busses, but here you can find the most accessible shops like H&M, Mango and Zara. From this street you can walk down to Puerta del Sol, a famous square of Madrid with always lots of tourists. On the way to Puerta del Sol you can find many shops as well, which will take a lot of time to visit them all.

Madrid is notable for its nightlife and night clubs. The biggest one, el Kapital, has seven floors and every floor has its own music style. This one is very huge and always crowded. It is located in the city centre. Another big one is Pacha, a Spanish club for people who look for luxury. The entrance fee is high and you need to follow the dress code. If not, you cannot enter. Tourist chose very easily for el Kapital or Pacha. Another popular club is Joy Eslava, which is actually a theatre.

A lot of clubs are to be found in Madrid, but generally people prefer to go to bars. The district of Chueca, the gay neighbourhood, is also a popular place to have drinks for hetero people as well as gay people.

Having dinner in Madrid is affordable, compared to many other countries. For €25,- you can easily eat and drink a lot. Of course tapas are very Spanish, but most of the restaurants only offer them during the day. During the evening you can always order for example paella, meet and fish. Here some popular student restaurants:

• Wagaboo (6 restaurants, tasting menu for €23,90)
• Lateral (5 restaurants, 1 at e.g. Santa Ana Square)
• Bazaar (located in the district of Chueca, opens at 20h30)
• 100 Montaditos (>10 restaurants, Wednesday €-night)

We hope this information is helpful for all students going on Erasmus in Madrid.

If you feel like sharing information with other students on different Erasmus cities, feel free to contact us and send us your text!

Britt, thank you for this!

Finding a flat the other way

Erasmate, as you know, is all about helping students find affordable accommodation across Europe. By bringing together people, who currently don’t need their own place with people searching for temporary housing, we help both parties benefit. The sublessor does not pay rent for an empty space, the subtenant gets a room or flat without a long term binding rental contract after paying an enormous amount of money to some agency.

While the housing offers on Erasmate are obviously focused on student needs and budgets, a similar situation exists in many European cities with regard to renting larger appartments and flats. That’s why a fellow from Munich, Germany, has come up with a new way of how he wants to find his perfect flat without paying fees to an agency in the range of ~5000 Euros!

Through the website stattmakler.de (which can roughly be translated with ‘instead of a real estate agent’) Alexander is gathering tips and advice from people about flats that match his needs. For every valuable hint he gets, Alexander donates 5 Euros to charity. In addition, everyone recommending a place or a new way of finding Alexander his dream home, enters a raffle to win an original Apple iPad (UMTS/64GB)!

A great idea to avoid paying an outrages amount of money to an agent, who does hardly more than just show you around in a place that isn’t even their own. With his website, Alexander will most likely find a nicer flat and very certainly at lower costs, so if you happen to know someone with a free 4-5 room appartment in Munich, give Alexander a hint and maybe you are soon the happy owner of that iPad.

Travel Insurances

It might seem as a minor details and too much hassle to go through… But have you thought about arranging an insurance for your travelling during your Erasmus year?

We keep our fingers crossed for you that nothing will happen to you, but not only might you have problems when going to your final Erasmus destination; you may also want to travel around during the year and that always involves certain risks.

Even if you are the most careful person on the planet, there is unfortunately always a chance that due to someone else’s fault you get into problems.

That’s why we recommend you Columbus Direct for an affordable travel insurance. You can currently get a quote with their Spanish, Italian and German offices:

Spanish:	Italian:	German:

For further insurance options in other countries, you can also request a quote on travel insurances from our other partner, WorldNomads.com.

Hablo Español!

Would you like to prepare for your Erasmus trip to Spain and learn some basic Spanish before you leave? Or are you simply into languages and want to add the sweet sound of España to your repertoire?

Here’s your chance to learn the first lessons of basic communication skills in Sapnish right there in front of your computer. LinguaTV teaches you with comprehensive video tutorials everything you need to know to get started with speaking Spanish!

If you want to know what the lady is trying to tell you in this short introduction video, start a test lesson of the basic Spanish vocabulary course here!

¡BUENA SUERTE!

Introducing: Online Language Courses

Are you preparing your Erasmus stay abroad and are still a little worried about the level of your new home’s language? You just can’t quite get the full meaning of the university course descriptions, or are stuck with reading through the foreign information websites?

We are happy to serve you a solution to your language problems!

Erasmate has teamed up with LinguaTV to now offer you video-based language courses to help you with your Erasmus preperations. We have chosen the award winning online courses from LinguaTV to provide you with the most efficient way of learning English, French, German or Spanish (and much more to come!).

Check out the selection of all available online language courses on Erasmate! And be fast – the first 50 Erasmate users get a 10% discount on their course registration!!

The Erasmus Programme

Dear readers!

Do you know the history of the Erasmus programme? Which countries participate and how many students participated in the Programme over time? Here are your answers:

The Erasmus Programme is a European Union student exchange programme and gives you the possibility of doing an exchange period between 3 months and maximum 12 months to one of your University’s partner Universities.

The Programme, together with a number of other independent Programmes, was incorporated into the Socrates Programme established by the European Commission in 1994. After ending on 31 December 1999, Socrates Programme was replaced with the Socrates II Programme 24 January 2000, which in turn was replaced by the Lifelong Learning Programme 2007-2013 on 1 Janauary 2007. An Erasmus exchange student receives a grant from the EU to help cover the additional expense of linving abroad. The hight of the grant is decided per academic year. Currently, the annual budget is in excess of 450 million euro and more than 2.2 million students have participated since it started in 1987. Lastly, over 4 000 higher education institutions participate and more to come!

For studies as well as internships the following countries offer the possibility of doing your Erasmus: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and United Kingdom.

New Homepage – What do you think?

Erasmate’s!

As you might have seen, Erasmate is having a new homepage. We hope this new welcome page provides our users with more valuable information and makes it even easier to guide through erasmate.com. As always, we are open for feedback and input of you. Would you like to see something being change? Let us know!

Enjoy your Tuesday!

UK students educationally disadvantaged during Erasmus?

A recent article in The Guardian discusses the political proposition of introducing a new two year degree in UK university education. On a site note, the paper mentions an interesting fact with regard to the Erasmus program.

As UK students “traditionally take fewer years to complete their studies [and] their courses are also often shorter and they average fewer hours of study per week” compared to students in other European cities, they consequently find courses taught during their Erasmus year more demanding than in the UK, while incoming students to the UK find the education on the island less demanding.

If this gap in educational quality is indeed existing, one possible disadvantage for UK students is a harder entry on to the European labour market, as employers see their European counterparts to be better educated, the article summarises the problem.

We are interested in your thoughts on this. Have you experienced something similar? How was the quality of education on your exchange period compared to your home university? Have you applied for a job but were rejected due to a UK education? Tell us your story!

Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs

While Erasmus is a great chance for Bachelor students to spend some time abroad, and Erasmus Mundus offers a similar opportunity for Masters, there is another program by the European Union that even goes a step further:

Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs offers people who are thinking about starting up their own business and those who are already a successful entrepreneur a similar way to exchange ideas and gain new experiences. Set up in early 2009, Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs “offers new entrepreneurs the opportunity to learn from an experienced entrepreneur who is running a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) in another EU country”.

We believe this is a great initiative and recommend anyone, who is interested in Entrepreneurship, foreign economies and cultures, and just enjoys spending valuable time abroad, to participate in Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs.