According to the BBC, 3.7 million students study abroad per year. And this number is increasing by 12 percent. But you can’t take every belonging with you. Every week, students confess what items they can’t travel without. 

Dilyara Zeletdinova (24) is from Kazachstan and is studying International Business in Prague. ‘My secondary field is project management. I’ve been living in Prague for six years now. I choose to go abroad because it was more challenging and I was interested to get more perspective on the world. I wanted to find out what there is in Europe, get more opportunities and just have a wider look at the world. I wanted to go to the west since I was 14, I was exposed to the American culture and I would choose to study in the States, but it’s too expensive. So Prague was number one on the list because we had people who went there before and just I found out that the education is for free here so I decided to give it a shot.’

1. Wallet 
‘I need money cause I would need to buy a snack and coffee. I usually fly to Kazachstan through Moscow and it usually is a night flight so I’m getting coffee every time. This one is obvious but I take my passport and Visa with me always because you might need it when you travel to another place.’

2. Headphones and book
‘I love music, I love listening to music when I‘m on the plane if I want to sleep. You need to do something and you’re just reading.’

3. Painkillers
‘I would need to take my painkillers because sometimes I have pain when I’m on a plane. It’s ridiculous but I have a headache when we’re landing so I carry painkillers with me so I can take them whenever I need it.’

4. Phone
‘Phone and charger, I think is obvious. I mostly need my phone to communicate with someone, saying that I arrived and everything is fine. Besides that, I use my phone to listen to some music.’

5. Blanket
‘I travel a lot and I love my blanket so I want to travel with that everywhere. But it’s ridiculous so I don’t take them with me.’

Dilyara also would love to take more outfits with her. ‘When I’m traveling, I hate that I cannot change clothes or sometimes I do bring something like, even though I’m traveling, and I know I’m gonna be somewhere in the morning where it’s hot so I’m gonna grab some shorts to very quickly change my clothes somewhere. If you’re traveling through a foreign country, I usually want to have more shoes. I usually take with me like one pair fo shoes, maybe two. But it’s nice to have options. I don’t know, a lot of shoes but it’s great to kinda when you feel like wearing this, you can wear this so it’s such a girl thing. And also, sometimes it’s too hot and too cold.’

Text and photo: Aram Van den Eynde