Students who study or work abroad outperform their peers in the classroom and jobs market, are 19% more likely to gain a first and 20% less likely to be unemployed, according to a study by Universities UK. A lot of the inspiration for Bimble came from the uni ‘year abroad’ of founder Francesca. So this September we pay tribute to the life changing year it is and how Bimble can soften the blow of total immersion in a new city and culture.
Becoming Viennese, by Chelsea Coates
In her Bimble bio, Chelsea describes herself as “a part-time student, full-time foodie from London”. Recently back from a year abroad in Vienna, Chelsea writes about her Austrian escapades.
Going on your year abroad always poses a few challenges, which, unfortunately, aren’t about to get any easier in the era of COVID. For me, moving to Austria had its fair share. Firstly, I had to learn to survive the biting Austrian winter (top tip: a warm coat isn’t enough — you need layers. Lots of them.) Secondly, trying not to drown in the heaps of admin coming my way, for setting up a new bank account, finding accommodation and a myriad of other things. Thirdly, managing to do all of that in a different language!
You would think that having learnt German for over four years, I would feel pretty secure on the language side of things, but speaking a language in the classroom is a world away from being completely immersed in it. In addition to this, I soon discovered that the German I had learnt wouldn’t even be much use to me in some conversations, especially when to express “I don’t mind”, a new friend didn’t say the “Es ist mir egal” (“It’s the same to me”) I was used to, but “Es ist mir Wurst” (It’s sausage to me) instead. There’s the Austrian dialect for you!
I had been warned that the dialect would take a while to get used to, and even if I was caught off guard several times, I started to fall in love with its turns of phrase. Finding your feet, though difficult, is really rewarding in the end.
Specific local know-how, however, takes time to accumulate. Most advice tends to focus on solving practical problems, such as fending off loneliness by joining sports teams or adjusting to a new workplace. Precious tidbits of local information take much longer to find. They are only earned after slowly forming friendships with locals you meet so that they can take you to those cool places, or by visiting those places by yourself and finding your favourites through trial and error.
Bimble helps to make this process much smoother.
Bimble makes the perfect year abroad companion because it allows you to conveniently store all of your favourite places in one place — no more scrolling through the Notes app to find where you scribbled down the name of that great boutique and no more scanning through your photos, hoping you remembered to take a picture at that amazing restaurant before you dug into your meal. Every one of your favourite places, along with their locations and their opening times, can be found on Bimble, with notes reminding you what makes them so great. When your year abroad does eventually come to an end, as all good things do, the Bimbles you make there still serve a purpose: for planning future holidays, for sharing with other students about to embark on their own journey, or for simply giving you that feeling of nostalgia.
So, to help other students on their year abroad — and there are thousands each year — get the Bimble app and make your very own #yearabroad Bimble! (and if you want to take my Vienna favourites for your own Bimble, go ahead, it’s sausage to me.)
