When Asia meets Europe - My Christmas break adventures!

Studying in the UK gives you a great opportunity to explore Europe during Christmas or Easter breaks. Comparing to Azerbaijan, Europe is more approachable to visit from the UK as flights are much cheaper and take less time! After travelling to a couple of European countries over the Christmas break, I've decided to write a small blog post with useful tips for those who are planning to fill their Instagram profiles with cool #travelling pictures over the academic breaks. The blog post will be divided in two sections as I've visited Prague, Czech Republic and Reykjavik, Iceland and have so much to tell you about my holidays in both countries. There will be an additional section with tips on how to plan your travelling and have a stress free holiday. :)

Planning your holiday and getting you visa.

Planning to travel somewhere for Azerbaijani students (and for many other nationalities who require a travel visa while travelling to Europe) starts from the longest process of applying for a Schengen visa. Just a quick reminder - unfortunately, you CANNOT travel to Europe with your student tier 4 visa :( Therefore you will need to book an appointment at the visa application center and get your short-say Schengen visa as soon as possible). To be fair, the process only seems complicated, however if you follow all the steps of preparing the right documents before your appointment, you will get your visa quickly and without stress:

1. Book an appointment online for one of the applications centres in London. There are no visa centres in Norwich, so getting a visa will be a good excuse for you to spend a day out in London. :) For both trips I applied for a Schengen Visa on this website : www.vfsglobal.com . You will need to book an appointment, print an application form, fill it and bring it with you to the application centre. No application fee needed to pay! In order to ensure you get a visa, get all the documents that are required. You can find a list on the website I mentioned above. 
2. Arrive at the visa applications centre minimum 10 minutes before your appointment. London is a busy and beautiful city so you lose your sense of time there very easily :) In order to avoid any disappointments leave all entertainment for after your appointment time.
3. At the end of your appointment, the staff representative will offer you a service of posting your passport back to you. If I'm not mistaken, they charge you £15 for posting your passport, but trust me, when you do calculations you realise it will cost you much more money to travel to pick up your passport from London.  

Planning your holiday starts from booking a flight and a place to stay. Booking online requires a high level of attentiveness. Check everything twice before paying online, especially when you are about to purchase your air plane tickets. As you will have to provide the visa application centre with the booking references of your flight and hotel/hostel, you had better buy all of it in advance (it's also cheaper when you do so). Good websites for booking flight tickets are : www.skyscanner.net and www.budgetair.co.uk. In Prague we chose to stay in a flat and booked it through www.airbnb.co.uk and in Reykjavik we stayed in hostel booked via www.hostelworld.com. More detailed information about both places will be given later in this blog post :) 

Prague, Czech Republic.

We booked flights to Prague with Ryanair airlines and to be honest I won't do that again. Tickets were quite cheap but service was very low: staff can't properly speak English and are very rude. However the place we've stayed in was amazing! I would definitely recommend it anyone who plans to visit Prague! It's a lovely apartment, en suite, clean and very cheap (£61 per person for three nights)!!! The host is amazing, very nice and very helpful - on the first day he gave us a map with information about cheap and good places to visit, eat and have fun. Location is very convenient as well, just 10 minutes walk to the nearest metro station and half an hour walk to the city centre! Great service for a low price! www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/1775594 

 

I'm happy that I got a chance to visit Prague during the Christmas period as it looks absolutely lovely with all these Christmas lights and Christmas markets. Definitely the must visit places in Prague are : Old Town Square, Charles Bridge and Mala Strana. 

Prague is a perfect place to visit while you are a student because it's very cheap! Big and cheap portions of food and good price for students while visiting Cathedrals and museums. Prague has a great choice of amazing cafes and restaurants for vegetarians and vegans. Pancakes and Trdelnik are everywhere! 

If you are planning to visit Prague in winter, don't forget to get some thermal clothes as it's quite cold. Also always have some coins in your pocket as you will need them while purchasing tram or metro tickets. All routes including airport-town and inside metro are straight forward and even if you got lost don't hesitate to ask people around as they are very kind and helpful. 

Prague is a very romantic place but also very adapted for young people as there are a lot of places to enjoy with your friends (pubs, pub crawls organised by hostels and etc.).

Second part about Reykjavik will be published shortly :) 

Feel free to leave you comments below :) - Kamala Hajialibayova, International Student Ambassador for Azerbaijan.