Just for you, Zeynep

I wanted to tell you about my friend Zeynep. I could just write Z., but the name is beautiful and it deserves to take part in the story. Zeynep is Turkish; she arrived in Darmstadt a couple of months after me. We met in a Praktikantentreff on the top of the Hundertwasser building. Back then, I had to ask her to write her name down, so that I could get it. Since that summer day 2 years ago we are friends and, here in Darmstadt, Zeynep is the first friend I had. This gives her the special status of old friends that, it seems, were always there. She already saw my future in a cup of Turkish coffee and when I show up at the end of the day at her place, I hardly go out without having a cup of tea, or bringing some cake or chocolate home. Turkish hospitality. Mediterranean culture.

At the end of the internship she did at Merck, Zeynep did not want to go back home in Turkey. We did not talk a lot about why she took this decision; I guess she imagined herself suffocating in Turkey. Having finished her chemistry degree with the internship at Merck, Zeynep lost also the student status and her residence permit. From what I learned until now about visas:

• Being a student, you can get a residence permit, which gives you the right to study and do curricular internships. Voluntary internships are not allowed and neither is working
  


• To work, you need a work permit. As non-EU citizen, this is the first question you are asked from the employer when you apply for a job. Question: how can you get a work permit??? Answer: you just have to show the German immigration services a work contract. Yes, the same one you cannot get without a work permit!
  


• There is only one way (as far as I know) to break this cycle: finding an employer that loves you so much he is ready to hire you without a work permit. As you can imagine, these people are very rare. Why would you hire someone without a work permit when you have still 10 people queuing to have the job?

Zeynep soon understood it would be very hard to find the prince charming employer. Being Turkish and hardly speaking German (at the time) would not be of great help. She picked the first choice: student visa. For almost a year, Zeynep did a German intensive course in the Goethe Institute in Frankfurt. After that, she decided to take an MBA (she always found marketing or management more interesting than chemistry. But, one again, it would not be easy: for the academic MBA, her chemistry degree was not enough to fulfil the pre-requisites; for the executive one she is too young and does not have the required 3 years of professional experience. Besides, to engage an executive MBA, you need to have a job. Anyway, none of this hinder her! She gets a well-paid job as student worker at Merck, with which she gets the work permit. This job is enough to engage the MBA and somehow she also overcomes the problem of the 3 years professional experience. She started the MBA this year, which means having classes in the evening after work and on Saturdays. She finds also time to give private lessons of English, Maths and Chemistry. At work, she was offered a new contract for the end of the MBA.

Zeynep could not be happier when she feels that bit-by-bit she finds her place where she chose to live but where things were never easy. I admire Zeynep a lot; she never gave up in face of a closed door and, many times, opened new ways where there was not even a door.

Zeynep doesn't speak portuguese yet.