ANR:
Name:
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Exchange semester:
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Host University:
Country:
451610
Annick Smits
A.J.M.Smits@uvt.nl
Spring, 2015
2014-2015
North-West University Potchefstroom
South-Africa
The NWU campus
The campus of this university looks beautiful, full of trees, hills and nice places to sit down and relax. On
the website of the university you can do a virtual tour, which gives you a perfect indication of how
beautiful it is. On the campus is a Student Centre, a g ym, a nice library and a place in the Student
Centre where you can drink a coffee and eat (cheap) breakfast, lunch and dinner. When you walk out of
the campus you will be almost directly on De Bult. This is the area where restaurants, pubs and
coffeeshops (with the most delicious coffee, especially DeMilko) are. A supermarket is also just outside
campus. All the exchange students we know are accommodated on campus o r in CampusKey, a
building next to campus. We have everything that we want around us and if we would like to do some
big shopping at the MooiRiver Mall, we ask one of our South African friends to bring us there. It is 10
minutes by car or you can go by bike, if you rent one. In this mall you can find everything that you want.
Nice places to visit
Potch is not a big city such as Pretoria or Johannesburg. It is a student place where everybody knows
everybody and therefore you can easily feel home there. In Potch are a lot of places where you can go
for dinner, such as Fiori, de Akker, de Broken Pot, Beef boys, Fine Things and the Draak. The Draak is
a place on campus where students can go for drinking and dining, or watching rugby or soccer matches.
Then there is our favorite place: deMilko. This is a coffeeshop with live music o n almost every
Wednesday evening. If you are in Potch, definitely go to deMilko! Besides that, you can always go for a
walk to River Café, a very special place next to the dam. Having lunch here with a view on the dam is
perfect. Afterwards you can go to Wakaberry, a place for frozen yoghurt. In addition to these places, I
have to mention that the nice nature around Potch is probably the best. Just outside the main streets of
Potch there are the most beautiful places for seeing the sunset, having a picknick or a nice evening with
drinks and friends.
The students
To visit these nice places outside Potch you’ll need the advice of local students. The good thing is that
the students on the Potchefstroom campus are very open, friendly and interested in hearing s tories from
exchange students. Since there are not a lot of exchange students in Potch (we are this semester with a
group of 15 exchange students), people are quite surprised when there is a person from overseas
walking around in a place with +/- 20 000 students. So no worries about not meeting locals!
Cultural experience
If you are interested in culture and/or history, Potch is a very good place to go to. You can learn a lot
about de Apartheid and about the Dutch influences in South Africa. Besides, it is very interesting to see
the current cultures. South Africa is a country with eleven official languages and a lot of different
cultures. If you do any effort for it, you will get to know a lot about this. Since I am very interested in this,
Potch was the best choice for me. In a bigger city I wo uld probably not have been able to learn as much
as I did now.
Studying on this university
The semester started chaotic, actually exactly as I had expected from the ‘efficiency’ in South Africa.
The registration on the university took us days and we had to run around and wait in queues for hours to
get our forms completed. So we learned immediately: do not try to hurry to o much or stress, because
that will not make any difference. Just chill and everything will be alright: just like everything here. When
I started with my lectures I introduced myself to most of the lecturers. Probably they see immediately
that you’re not from here. Some of them then introduced me to the whole class.
During the lectures you can make use of the translation services: a person sits in the front of the
class and translates/interprets everything that the lecturer says to English. You will hear everything
through headphones. I expected that I would be able to understand Afrikaans soon and sit in the
lectures without the headphones, but this was not the case. Most of the lecturers speak too fast, so I
always made use of the translation service. The slides are most of the time in Afrikaans, but in some
lecturers it was both Afrikaans and English. All the exam papers are in Afrikaans and English.
What I noticed is that most of the lecturers here are very passionate about the course that they
give. They really put effort in preparation of the lectures and try to interact with the students as much as
possible. During the whole semester you will have quite a lot of class tests, which you have to pass at a
certain percentage to be allowed to make the final exam at the end of the semester. Because of these
tests, you have to keep up with the study material. This method entails more studying during the
semester than in Tilburg, but less studying and stress during the final exams. I rate the quality of the
courses here as high, and I even had the chance to follow lecturers from the best lecturer I ever had in
my study life: prof. Henrico (course: BMAN312 Entrepreneurship). If you are interested in
Entrepreneurship, definitely subscribe for this course and you will not regret it. I enjoyed this course, as
well as the other courses, a lot and would say that NWU is a good place for studying.
Travelling
During the week we enjoyed the student life in Potch, while during the weekends we went on trips.
Potch is 1.5 to 2 hours away from Johannesburg, which is nice since the airport is there. With Mango
you can fly for around 40 – 60 euro’s (one-way) to Capetown. During the semester we went to a lot of
places, like Drakensberg, Hartbeesport, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Maboneng (an arts area in
Johannesburg with a very nice backpackers hostel), Blyde River Canyon and Krugerpark. I am now
almost at the end of my semester and I will go travelling the last month: from Capetown to Port
Elizabeth. By means of the Baz bus (hop-on, hop-off) you can pay one certain amount and then hop-on
and hop-off the bus where and whenever you want.
Transport
In Potch almost every student has a car and almost nobody goes somewhere on a bicycle. Some of our
exchange friends had bikes, so we could use them for sometimes going to the mall or the Spar. If you
are willing to, you can go by taxibus (from the Bult) to the mall for 10 rand (less than a euro). This is not
very common to do for students and probably me and my friends are the only students who make use of
it, but I loved it. It is more an ‘Afrika-experience’ and I always enjoyed it a lot. But mostly you just walk,
because you can walk to almost every place in Potch.
If you want to go out of Potch, you can rent a car (Avis is a good rental service). From Joburg to
Capetown you can go by airplane or by bus. Note, when you go by bus (for example: the Greyhound
bus) keep in mind that the bus can have a delay of one or two hours. My friend s have used these bus
and besides this delay, they were very satisfied about it.
Potch is a great place to live for six months and to get to know the Afrikaans culture, in a very safe and
friendly environment.
With kind regards,
Annick Smits