ERASMUS IN GRANADA: HOW TO PACK FOR A YEAR

Each adventure with Erasmus exchange usually begins with a flight. It doesn’t look extraordinary at all. It usually happens so, buy surely not in the case when you go to study abroad for half a year. Let’s be honest. You have to take almost half of what you own and in practice it’s a terribly difficult issue. It’s normal that I’d like to feel at home in Spain. The first problem occurs a week before my departure. In 2006 I was flying from Warsaw to Malaga with Norwegian, which had just opened its branch in Warsaw. You could take up to 20 kg of main luggage (1 suitcase) and 8kg of hand luggage in the plane.

27. wydzial nauk ekonomicznych i zarzadzania

My packing for Erasmus consisted of six stages plus making a long list of what I’d like to take. Besides that, at the beginning I had 13 kg excess luggage which I finally managed to reduce to 6,5 kg. In this situation I had to recon with an additional payment of 6 € for 1kg! You’ll probably think that I was crazy as I was ready to pay for an extra ticked because I wanted to take an additional pair of jeans. Nothing of that. The airline policy says each passenger is allowed to take maximum up to 32kg. So the problem doesn’t lie in the fact that a plane may not take off or fall down due to my heave luggage. In practice everything depends on the service at the airport.

That’s why I decided to smuggle somehow that “additional pair of jeans”. The beginning wasn’t easy at all. First you have to pretend your surprise at the fact you have such  great excess luggage and then you do buttery eyes. After all, I’m going to a foreign country for half a year and all by myself. A custom officer was very nice but it wasn’t an easy thing. At first she wanted me to pay for 2 kg excess luggage, but in the end she only smiled and placed a big sticker “very heavy” on my luggage. So big applause for this lady who proved that we don’t deal with “learned helplessness” in Etiuda Terminal at Warsaw Chopin Airport.

27. terminal etiuda

Then I underwent a standard “touching” of my luggage and me. The worst part was camping in a waiting area. Etiuda airport designer didn’t include in the design duty free shops, cafes and even sitting places for more than 50 people. Have you ever heard about Etiuda terminal at  Warsaw Chopin Airport? In the same place there were passengers waiting for 3 different planes. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was flying with my faculty friend Kasia and her friend Łukasz from economics department, I would have definitely laid an egg or two.

The best fun was while boarding the plane. As in low cost airlines there are no seat numbers, an angry crowd grabbed first unoccupied place. It’s quit of a self-advertisement of Norwegian airlines? Frankly speaking that wasn’t so bad. The service on board was very nice and what’s more important dear ladies- there were very handsome male flight attendants in black gloves. I guess Norwegian is the only airline which requires wearing special gloves by its stuff in certain moments. Allegedly, lest they had to catch something hazardous. We weren’t explained, however, why some men exchanged them among one another. I didn’t feel safer at all due to them. Let’s be honest, Norwegian pilots like flying down a lot, so I recommend falling asleep, especially having taken aviomarin.

27. taxowka malaga

Polish taxi drivers are sometimes accused of not speaking English, but despite that they usually take their passengers to a right destination. At the airport in Malaga, only the third taxi driver understood in Spanish that we wanted to get to a bus station to go to Granada, and not to a bus stop that was a few meters away. But nobody will cheat on us for sure. In Andalusia, like in the whole Spain, there is only one taxi company. When we get to a bus station we only have to buy tickets and wait for a departure time. Timetables in Spain aren’t very popular. So you shouldn’t be surprised that a bus that was supposed to leave at 1:45pm is ready to leave at 1:20pm, and instead at stand 24 it waits at 28. Some might be happy with the fact that in a station café it’s cheaper to place an order at the table rather than at the bar. Such things are possible in Spain only.

No more than 2 hours ……….and we are in Granada. Luckily, here I was awaited by my Spanish friend from my faculty who I would live with.


Does anyone of you remember the times of flights from Etiuda Terminal- a provisional pavilion at Warsaw Chopin Airport? Share your opinions in the comments. I’ll be willing to know your adventures especially from those who were at Erasmus exchange as well.

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