At the border of Europe

With a suitcase full to the brim without so much as room for an extra sock I traveled from my everyday life at the University of Southern Denmark to Turkey's capital Istanbul to take a semester as an exchange student. My knowledge about Turkey was limited to charter holidays and youth trips on the country's south coast, but I had never before visited the 'real' Turkey.

I arrived a few days before I was to start the introduction week that the university had planned for all of the new exchange students. Before I left Denmark, the other students had already started to message everyone in a joint WhatsApp group chat that the university had set up for us. They wrote about when they would arrive and if anyone were interested in meeting. 

I quickly agreed to meet with other new students during the week before classes started. And although one could fear that misunderstandings and enmity could arise between people with different nationalities, it was very limited. The dominant mentality is that everyone should be involved and that we as a unit together should make experiences of a lifetime. 

The introduction week turned out to be a short affair. A massive earthquake had struck the southern part of Turkey, near the border to Syria, and it came to affect the rest of my stay in Istanbul. The day after the earthquake our classes at the University were postponed indefinitely. Therefore, I and a few fellow exchange students chose to spend the time traveling around Turkey. In total, I only ended up starting my classes at the university a month after I originally was supposed to. 

Everyday life begins

Fortunately, the semester was not cancelled, and the classes began in march. The semester was transformed into a hybrid solution in order for the student, from the earthquake affected areas could stay with their families. This made the classrooms less full, which was a pity when you come to Turkey as an exchange student and wanted to learn about a new culture. 

Most of my courses turned out to have incredibly committed teachers, and the workload was very similar, if not greater, than what I am used to back home in Denmark. 

My weeks were spend half the day studying, while the other half was spent socializing with the other students. We went to football matches at the stadium, exploring Istanbul as a tourist, eating at restaurants or meeting up at one of the countless bars in the city. The weekends were spent on trips around Turkey. During my stay I visited a large part Turkey from east to west. With various fellow students, we traveled with a night bus to Pamukkale, an area of white limestone terraces. We flew to Cappadocia, a valley in Turkey where hundreds of hot air balloons took off every morning at dawn. But we also visited ancient cities built by the Romans, the beaches I knew from my charter trips and other huge cities in Turkey. 

The journey home

Suddenly, my time in Istanbul were coming to an end. My time as a Erasmus+ student felt different than it does at home. Although 5 months had passed in no time, it was as if what had happened 2 weeks earlier was a lifetime ago. Sometimes I got the feeling that I had known my fellow students for a huge part of my life, even though we only met a few months ago. The hardest part was definitely saying goodbye to the other students with whom I had spent the most time with. But by saying that this is the hardest part, shows that it has been a completely unique thing to be an exchange student. And with a burning wish that it would continue a little longer, testifies that a semester at home can in no way measure up with the experiences of taking a semester abroad, regardless of the location. 

Updated on Þriðjudagur, 17/02/2026