Self confessed travel junkie, Tracey, has travelled to Croatia, Latvia, Greece, Ireland, Romania and China through staff exchange - not without mayhem and mishaps! Image Staff exchange Destination: Croatia, Latvia, Greece, Ireland, Romania, China Year: 2016-2023 Share your experience My running joke with Lesley Balharry at Edinburgh Global was that I needed to find a Erasmus+ staff mobility opportunity in Marbella. Not for the glamour and sunshine, but because I kept choosing staff mobility options in places which required me to twist myself into knots about complicated travel routes. My teaching week in Zagreb, Croatia required me to stay overnight in London on the way out, because that was the only way to make a flight connection. It was probably my most expensive bout of European travel, but thankfully my host university offered me a studio apartment, which saved my budget. A course about online teaching in Riga, Latvia resulted in Air Baltic failing to move my checked suitcase between terminals during my 8-hour Gatwick stopover, so it didn’t arrive until two days later. (This is why you always sign up for the university travel insurance - I was fully reimbursed for my replacement clothes and toiletries, and even the bank fees on my credit card.) My final staff mobility was in Timisoara, Romania, where I originally planned to fly in and out of Budapest and take trains from there. I decided to fly with Lufthansa, which changed their schedules so often before my departure that on the way home, I was in four countries (Romania, Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom) before noon. In some cases, I made my own complications – giving guest lectures at Fudan University on the International Credit Mobility scheme, I could simply have flown in and out of Shanghai, but instead I took the opportunity to visit Hong Kong. I’ve never enjoyed a bowl of ramen as much as when I used the hot water spigot at the end of the train car, and used my passable chopstick skills to eat while watching the countryside speed past my window. Dr Tracey S. Rosenberg School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures And speaking of food, just outside the university was an amazing cart where they made you a breakfast pancake with a variety of fillings. Paying for it was like seeing China speed forward in real time – you could toss coins into a tin, but you could also scan your phone to use Apple Pay. For a travel junkie like me, all of this was absolutely thrilling. But of course, the real benefits of my staff mobility involved people. Chatting about Scottish and Canadian literature with a Croatian scholar as we toured a local art museum and then shared a pizza the size of my head. Pairing with a self-proclaimed Elon Musk fanboy to design an Italian-Scottish-Latvian tartan. Distributing shortbread and IAD swag to workshop participants from Wales, Greece, Lithuania, and Denmark in a windowless room in the basement of an Ibis hotel. Offering suggestions in a group session at the British Council to help my fellow writers – including a young refugee from Syria – polish their stories until they shone like gemstones. I’m grateful to the Erasmus+ staff mobility programme for allowing me to visit countries I’d never been to before, and to my various line managers for signing all the approval forms, and to Lesley and everyone else at Edinburgh Global for making it happen. And I’m also grateful to my hosts, the workshop co-participants, and all the students who made my various staff mobility weeks so amazing. Dr Tracey S. Rosenberg School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures I don’t think any replacement scheme can match Erasmus+ - not even if it sends me to Marbella. Current opportunities Find out more about all the staff opportunities available: Staff opportunities Read other staff stories Staff stories This article was published on 2024-06-24
