How it all began
Belgium, a whole country in Europe, is geographically smaller than Tamil Nadu (TN), a state in India, as shown in the figure below. It shares borders with Germany, Netherlands, Luxembourg and France. Despite the size, it has diversities such as the north (Flanders), the south (Walloon), the Brussels, french fries (people go nuts over this topic) and so on; similar to various slangs of Tamil and food in various regions of TN. I had no idea about any of these when I applied for the Ph.D. position at IDLab (associated with IMEC and University of Antwerp) based on their LinkedIn post, all thanks to my professor K. Vairamani for forwarding the post to me. Before that, I applied for a master’s twice in Europe and didn’t get in; once after my bachelor’s in Physics and again after my master’s in Electronics. I thought that having a master’s degree from abroad would widen my knowledge and my perspective on this world, and boost my career. I even got my IELTS C1 certificate with me at this point, along with an A1 certificate for German from the Goethe Institute and some basic French which I picked up during my bachelor’s. I wish I learned French better as it seems to be the widely spoken language here in Europe and also in Africa I guess, next to English.
After my second failure, out of spite of the whole master’s program, in a good way, I started applying for Ph.D. positions. I thought that if I was not going to be selected for the master’s program anyway, what is the harm in trying for something better than the master’s? It is a type of logic that was purely fuelled by optimism and rage. I didn’t care about the applicability of the logic to my case or its success rate as I didn’t know where my qualifications stood at that time in terms of eligibility for the master’s or PhD in Europe. However, I was diligent and sincere in the effort I put into these tries. I often used Erasmus+ (for Masters), daad.de, LinkedIn and Google searches to find the PhD/university/professor. Recently, I also came across this search site called PolytechnicPositions.com. I either apply through the dedicated portal or email the professors directly with a kind request. I now think that sending those emails using an institutional email ID rather than something like Gmail would have increased the chance of it not ending up in junk.
No reponse was a common theme. Some professors would respond in kind even though they had no opportunities for me, which felt good as it gave me some idea of why that’s the case and helped me improve myself for the next one. Expecting the worst made the application process feel bearable as all I needed was just one good opportunity to click. It had to be a public-funded place with scholarship opportunities as there is no way I am burdening my family with money issues again nor am I willing to be a scam victim (private institutions in Europe are sketchy and kinda unnecessary or at least that’s the sense I got from online research). Finally, the Belgium opportunity came in.
The one that clicked
It started with an interesting application process where I had to upload my one-minute self-introduction video (I added key texts to it). After uploading the required documents, as usual, I was looking for other opportunities as I was expecting the worst. To my surprise, I got called for the next round of the interview which was a coding exam. If I remember right, the exam was on Codility. I was sure I gave a terrible performance during this interview. So, for one of the coding questions which I thought my answer was inadequate, I drafted a better answer after the test and sent it to the examiner’s email because I had nothing to lose by doing it (that was my thought process).
Later, I got another email for the next round (surprise!). This time I was interviewed by a bunch of people who would go on to become the members of the team I started working with. Then came the final round, where I was interviewed by the professor himself. He made the final decision to select me. I was ecstatic when I received a positive response through email (literally jumping!). Little did I know that it was the start of a lengthy document process for obtaining a visa that would test the performance of various public and private infrastructures. I hate paper works but the excitement watered down the hate.
DIY-ing the paperwork
The first step was to get the documents such as college certificates apostilled. It is a process by which the national documents become valid abroad. There is a government portal called eSanad which we used for this purpose. I remember spending something like Rs. 2000 on it. Alternative options provided by private guys are so costly, up to Rs. 10K per document. Some people even demanded almost Rs. 50K to lakhs for the whole visa process. I wonder if that includes the flight ticket (I guess not). But I remembered my college mate who went to Germany before mentioning that it’s possible to do all the documentation process directly by ourselves without any third party assistance. So we pushed forward by ourselves (me and my family). For eSanad, my father had to chase down the responsible guys from the university over the phone and get the documents moving (I wonder what they were waiting for? Rhetorical). Finally, we got it. Then we applied for the visa online through VFS Global, as they are the official partner of the Embassy of Belgium in India. This process was pretty straightforward. We had to get a medical certificate from the specified doctor/hospital, followed by a few more documents from the admitting institution, police verification and all that jazz.
Finally, the day came when we had to submit all of this at the VFS Global Center. Initially, I was told that we would be charged a fee for the visa (around Rs. 10K). Later, it was waived by the Belgium government as it was a student-type visa for getting admitted into a public-funded institution. My only funny regret is that I paid Rs. 2000 for the premium experience thinking that it would speed up and increase the care went into the process. It felt like it did but I was the last guy to go out of the facility as the visa fee waiver confirmation took forever. Overall it was a happy experience as the Rs. 10K visa fee was waived but I only saved Rs. 8K (It feels like I only scored 80% in an easy 90%+ scorable exam :P. On the other hand, I also feel that it was all for good). The submitted passport was brought home by a courier with the Belgium visa stamped on one of its pages. Meanwhile, we sold my beloved (Apache RTR 200 4v, the bike I enjoyed riding a lot, as maintaining it while I am gone could be tough for my family and I can’t use it while I am gone either) and booked the flight ticket with that money, which was around Rs. 50K. We also had to pay an advance of around Rs. 40K to the admitting institution abroad (which felt a little suspicious but still we went along with it).
The departure
Mind you, this was around Dec 2020, which was the peak of Covid-19, when international travel was in shambles. My flight got canceled and as a result, my joining date was postponed to Feb 8, 2021. Emirates was good to fly with for such a long journey with a connection at Dubai, their infotainment stuff and mainly, their good service record (I am wondering if I would ever get paid for this free promo. Lol!). By that time, I was also put in contact with my immediate supervisor Phil Reiter, who would later go on to become the pivotal person in my Ph.D. career and my Belgium experience. Upon landing in Belgium started a series of tough and slightly cold-shoulder-ed experiences. Let me save that for part 2. I must say one thing though - my family has provided their rock-solid support to me every time it mattered. Tschüss!
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