Flying Smartly

So during this year I have been asked by many people how I could afford to travel so much all over the world - well this post will hopefully give some simple answers:

Workshops, conferences, business-related trips

I often find workshops, conferences or other business-related trips to which I apply or get invited to, so I do not pay for the flights/trips. This helped me to get to Torino, Zurich, London, Paris, Berlin and other cities. After or before attending the event I would try to see something from the city or even visit some friends in the respective city. 

You should always try to make some free time to actually visit the city besides the actual purpose of the trip. Now I know that not everyone has the chance to just attend these kind of events, but look on the Internet, I am sure that you will find events that 1) are interesting for you and 2) to which you can also apply to and which are on top of it in very cool cities - try and apply, you have nothing to lose!

Scholarships

The second answer I can give is that I was often supported by scholarships that have helped me to pay for bigger trips. I am very thankful for the support. So if you consider doing an internship abroad I would definitely advice you to look for scholarships and mobility scholarships on the Internet. There are a lot of institutions that support stays abroad and internships abroad. - If you need help, email me.

Booking cheap flights and using clever transit

Of course I also rely on cheap flights and train tickets. 

I am still confused how all the airlines and webpages calculate their prices, but I have noticed that flight prices are mostly down during the morning (5-7 am), so I found flights from Germany to New York for around 340€ for 2 weeks from now - which is pretty short notice. 

I would also recommend to check and compare flights in the local currency (e.g. Euro vs. Dollar in that example) and the current exchange rates.

Also make sure to check local flight companies for inner flights as they will be certainly much cheaper!

If I found a cheap flight with a transit, I would make sure that 1. it is via a very cool city and 2. if it's a cool city, try to stay in that city as long as possible.

That is what one of my friend did when we flew to Shanghai. We had to stop in Dubai and he had 10 hours to kill before his flight from Dubai to Shanghai, so he took a cab and discovered Dubai - for no additional flight costs :) So all in all he got to see Dubai and Shanghai for around 500€.

I know this can be very stressful and is probably not something everyone wants to do. But if you want to use every occasion and you don't have the budget to travel all the time for >1000€ - this might be a good option for you.

If you need more tips or more information on the points above, feel free to email me.

So for me the next stop will be Ecuador for four weeks during the Christmas break and using the above I will spend another two days in Miami as I will fly over Miami) and I only paid 550€ YEAH! :) 

some random pics :)

by Sisi

Columbia Business School

As several people asked me how I was doing and how it is in New York, I thought I'd give some insights on some topics starting with this one:

Columbia Business School: (not actually this building)

Now I really understand why people pay a fortune to go back to school for an MBA. 

It is definitely for networking purposes and honestly the people at the Business School are great!

They are open-minded, come from various backgrounds and are very easy-going. They proof that the "student syndrome" does earn its name... people do the minimum amount of work at the latest point of time possible to hold the deadline and to maximize fun and social networking - awesome strategy! Every Thursday they have the MBA Happy Hour which is comparable to the HEC Paris POW (Party Of the Week) - although to a certain degree it might be a bit more sophisticated as they also serve free food....

Many people in Columbia Business School have a Finance and/or Consulting background, but compared to the German Business students a.k.a. "BWL"er, I do not think they are snobby, arrogant or overly competitive at all and that is what I like about the atmosphere here so far. I mean, of course they are ambitious, have high expectations and are perfectionists, but this actually creates a very positive effect why people feel motivated to be a part of.

Taught using case studies, my MBA courses so far have been interesting. For instance, in one of my classes we talked about a Happines Study, in which the professor conducted a huge survey in various countries to assess diverse factors (e.g. believe in god, having kids, employment, mariage, money) and their influence on our happiness. Apparently, we are the unhappiest between the age of 24-65, this might have something to do with the fact that people normally work during this life period. Having listened to this, it just strengthens my decision to NOT work for a company haha.

Unfortunately, I must admit that overall I have been a bad student so far. I just cannot leave my laptop in my bag and pay attention to someone talking in front of me. Not even the Harvard Professor on Social Organizations was able to catch my attention entirely... I just realize that maybe listening to someone for two hours is just not my cup of tea...

Oh yeah one observation I made during class which I would like to share:

So during the class where we were talking about the happiness study, the professor explicitly asked us to shut down all laptops (oh my...), so we all (kind of) ended up paying attention. At some point my neighbor slipped a little note to me and we kind of started talking using paper and pen, and the neighbors on my other side were playing hangman - wow that definitely brought me back to highschool memories and I had to smile because I was sitting in a class with top-class invest bankers from Deutsche Bank, Citibank, Goldman and consultants from McKinsey and BCG but I suppose in the end we are all but humans and enjoy some little paper mailing and hangman games :)