Over 10’000 km in 9 months – by bike!

Student stories September 6, 2011

Nicolas Brahier, this Swiss young man about to set out for a bicycle tour of Australia, is quite an interesting character. He was born in 1987 in a little town located in the Jura region. Despite his attachment to his land, surrounded by nature and animals, he’s dreaming of escaping to a country at the opposite extreme: a far away island the size of a continent. The Australia of his dreams.

Our adventurous young man, who possesses a deep technical knowledge of electronics, is an IT/machine software developer. Along with his job, he also set up his own video production company. Nicolas will leave all of his activities in Switzerland behind him for 16 months in order to embark on a meticulously planned adventure.

Australia-1

If his travel plan is very well organised, Nicolas has another asset: his brother Julien. The geomatic engineer will visualize the itinerary of his cyclist brother across Australia.

Together, they have developed an interface featuring a topographical map that will allow us to visualize the course of his tour on-site directly on the project website. With his equipment, Nicolas will map Australia, or rather geolocate pictures, videos and articles about things to do in Australia. You’ll be able to see the planned outline of his tour and his actual itinerary and follow his adventures day after day thanks to his mini reportages.

The trip

At the moment, Nicolas is packing, checking his material and making an inventory of his complete technical equipment. He will leave for Australia on September 9th – but as a true Swiss man, he will not sit on his bike until he has achieved a good command of English.

Nicolas will therefore spend the first 6 months of his trip in Australia with a host family in Perth, where he enrolled for a Cambridge course at the Phoenix language school. With an ambitious goal: becoming trilingual in six months (Nicolas already speaks German and French).

australia_3

Language partnership

For his stay in total immersion, Nicolas chose his language partner according to well-defined criteria. He wanted a competent organisation to take charge of the organisation of the trip, the choice of the flight, accommodation option and course. One that would support him for the whole duration of his trip. ESL-Language Studies Abroad took up the challenge to build a tailor-made language study trip for Nicolas while taking into account the cultural dimension of his trip. Let’s bet that with such a competent partner, our sportsman will develop his language skills as well and become trilingual, as he wants it!

We will follow Nicolas’ trip over 15 months – stay connected!

By eva

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