Summer@EPFL Experience

I was recently given the opportunity to intern at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (aka EPFL), where I worked on Diffusion Models and Variational Autoencoders for a period of 9 weeks. I feel my experience was not only enriching from an academic standpoint, but it also led me to understand a lot of things about how to conduct oneself in foreign land, where the culture and environment is very different from what one is used to. Travelling alone abroad, specially if it is your first time, can be very stressful and taxing (at least initially). Through this post, I want to describe some of my own experiences in this regard, with the goal of alleviating a little of that anxiety which accompanies students (particularly undergraduates) when they step outside their country.

In my experience, there are usually four things that one needs to take care of before one can start feeling at home : Transport, finances (since currency change), internet and food (this is of course assuming the major things like accomodation etc. are taken care of already, which is usually done before reaching the place). I will describe my experience with each of these briefly, following which I will try and paint a picture of my first day in Switzerland, which was made quite difficult because of the lack of these.

Transport : It is very important to be informed and/or research about the available public (and private) transport systems when travelling to a new country. Have a clear idea of what trains, metros, buses and cabs work in the city, and what the conventional means of transport is for transit. You dont want to be taking cabs in a place like switzerland, for instance, where the cab fares are dispropotionatly high and the buses/metros that good. It helps to book a city tour or equivalent in the first few days (I did not do this, though, but this is what a lot of online resources advise), it not only clarifies some things about the common conventions people follow (that one is expected to know from day 1), but also makes the vastness of the city seem less daunting (if the places seem approachable, the city seems that much smaller and less intimidating).

Finances : This is mostly relevant if you are looking to stay in a place for a longer time duration - in months. This is slightly tricky, since a lot of countries do not allow you to open bank accounts (this was a shock to me initially, since I was planning on opening one at a local bank on my arrival), and transferring funds to and from an account in your home country can levy tariffs. Additionally, there are (hidden) charges like that for removing cash from an ATM, tourist charges, or the varying exchange rate that can make you lose money. In my case, I used a forex card (which also has tariffs for loading and offloading currency) for managing my funds, and had my payments sent to my home-country-bank-account (receiving cash would have been arguably better, but this way saved me trips to and from the bank, as well as the hastle of managing so much cash in hand). This did lead to some loss due to the exchange rate fluctuations, but oh well. Some of my colleagues received their stipends in cash, and that fared well for them too. Do make sure to discuss this with the paying agency beforehand, though, to avoid hastle.

By the way, the charges system for forex is very clever in that they levy fixed charge (say x units) each time you load, and a percentage of the corpus each time to offload (x% of the amount offloaded), which means that the way to minimize these charges is to load exactly the amount that you will require for your stay, and use it all. Without the fixed charge to load, one could keep loading small amount repeatedly, and without the percentage-based charge for offloading, one could load an unreasonably high amount and have it refunded later.

On a side note, I just want to put it out there that when travelling to a country that is more expensive (like most of western Europe), it is very important to carefully track your expenses. Due to the prices being slightly off-porportion to what you are used to (not to mention the extra charges you are exposed to in your first few weeks, when you’ve barely adjusted), you may not realize where you are overspending. In my case, I maintained an excel where I tabulated all of my daily expenses, which helped me keep track of all credit/debit transactions, so that I knew where I am bleeding money. The result was that I was aware and could carefully economize. Its just good hygiene, in my opinion.

Internet : I was lucky in this regard. My accomodation as well as EPFL had good wifi connections, so I only had to manage for internet when I was not home or at work, for which also I managed to find a cheap provider (relatively, I got a month of internet at around 1.5 times the cost of an average restaurant meal). One thing to keep in mind here is to check if the ISP you opt for allows roaming, since you would want to visit places around (specially if you’re in Europe). I had to order a local SIM for a small fee (an E-SIM would have made life easier, but my phone did not support it), but the upside was I got unlimited 5G internet throughout switzerland, and internet outside too at a very reasonable (additional) price.

Food : This is specially relevant if you are a vegetarian, since the number of things that you can consume in this case is reduced. Irrespective of where you travel (barring a few countries), I think it is a given that you will have to cook somewhat if you do not want to end up spending an unreasonably high amount for your nutrients, so knowing how to make basic dishes is an advantage. It takes some time to get used to grocery shopping if it is your first time, but eventually things start to make sense. You start to realize how to ration your supplies, what things are propotionately cheaper and which shops to buy what from.

I would like to briefly describe my first day in Switzerland, since I think the mistakes I made are instructive and avoidable. I landed in Geneva, without a swiss SIM, no ISP, with some cash in hand and I only knew which train I had to take to reach Lausanne (the city I was going to be staying at) from Geneva. I had an AirBnB booked for one night, some 3km from my actual accomodation. However, as soon as I reached Lausanne and climbed out of the train, I realised that without internet, and with the locals speaking only so much English (most only spoke French), I was going to have a tough time finding my way to the location. This was coupled with my lack of knowledge about the public transport (all sign boards in French meant that I did not have help there too), which meant I was on foot the entire time with almost 36kg of luggage on me. I somehow managed to find some tourists who spoke English, asked them to show me the way (I had memorized my destination location, thankfully), and took pictures of the map they showed me on their phones. It still took some navigation to finally end up where I was supposed to, albeit a few hours late and completely exhausted physically. (I immediately opted for a temporary roaming internet package on my Indian SIM itself when I got access to the AirBnB wifi, to avoid this situation again). The next day, although things were better because I had internet, I still found it hard to navigate, and resorted to travelling the 2-3km to my final abode on foot, which was not easy due to the heavy luggage and the uneven terrain. I managed to reach the place, somewhat late (the swiss population values time a lot, so they were not impressed!).

Clearly, I should have asked around about the public transport (there were direct bus routes from the station to the AirBnB and that to my accomodation, which I realized later. Could have saved so much effort) and should have figured out about my SIM and internet well before hand (I had to buy a new swiss SIM there eventually, since that provided the cheapest way to get permanent internet, that I could top-up even outside Switzerland). Further, knowing a bit of French, atleast “Bonjour”, “je m’appelle Aziz” , “Parlez-vous anglais?” and “merci” could have helped somewhat.

Interestingly, this experience is in stark contrast to my last night in Switzerland, which was also spent in a motel (since I had to check out of my accomodation earlier). Even though this was in Geneva (not Lausanne), by this time I was well versed with the culture, and I managed to spend the day roaming the city without a lot of hastle. I knew what to expect from the public transport, where to find/prepare food from and how to manage my time so that I could visit maximum number of places in my short stay in the city. Goes to show how easy it gets with time, once the initial pressures are overcome :)

My stay at Lausanne gradually improved, and by about two weeks in I was already starting to adjust to the new lifestyle, to the local culture and the new routine. I slowly figured about how the transport system worked, and what the cheapest way to move from point A to point B was. The new (swiss) SIM got me fast internet, and I found some peaceful places where I could spend my free evenings, not to mention some colleagues to spend them with. The initial days were stressful, which in hindsight are to be expected, but it got much better very quickly, so much so that I was completely in control of things by the end of the first month.

Travelling to a new country is a very enriching experience. You learn so much about the culture as well as about yourself, that it can hardly compare to anything else. If only one manages to walk through the initial days of pain, there are so many trips, places, people and events that one gets access to that it is overwhelming. There will invariably be many things to figure out on the field that you could not have possibly prepared yourself for, but things tend to automatically fall in place with time, you only have to hang in there. In hindsight, I can say that I was very lucky to have gotten this opportunity, where else could I get to climb the Alps, view majestic churches and cathedrals and structures and whatnot, roam around the richest cities and find peace on the banks of one of the most serene lakes in the continent. There are so many experiences that I have been through in these 9 weeks that it is hardly an over-statement when I say that I have had the largest growth as a person in these 2 months than in any other time frame this long, at least since the time I joined college.