Find The New You! (Part 2)

Last month, we highlighted some of the best places to study in Europe. This month, we bring you six new career paths that could change your life, and where to study for them.

There’s not much point heading to Ibiza for a new life as an electrician if you don’t know how to wire a plug – unless you plan on learning your new trade when you get there. Oliver Watson, from Manchester in the UK, had a fresh start in mind when he rocked up in Marseille in the south of France five years ago, enrolling himself on a plumbing course. He went on to be named the country’s best apprentice plumber out of 6,000 entrants.

It takes a certain kind of mindset to up sticks and start a new life, but there is a wonderful sense of optimism that comes with starting over – and maybe, just maybe, anything is possible. Here, we’ve trawled the schools and universities of Europe to find the best places to get you started.

A new life in…
THE MOVIES
With courses in both English and French, EICAR, The International Film School of Paris (www.eicar-international.com) is just the spot for budding Spielbergs or, indeed, fledgling Luc Bessons. If you fancy studying in an even more picturesque location, how about the Florence International Film School (www.newrenaissanceflorence.com), whose classes in the Renaissance city are taught in English?

You could also try Stockholm’s Dramatiska Institutet (www.dramatiskainstitutet.se), which offers a three-year film degree; Lillehammer University College (www.hil.no) in Norway, which runs a BA in Film and Television Science; and Prague Film School (www.filmstudies.cz), which claims to be among the world’s very best. Prague offers full-time programmes in film and documentary making, animation and acting, and its ethos is “a mix of European art-house and American independent cinema”. Only 50 students are allowed in each year, although they do also run summer filmmaking schools, too. Action!

A new life in…
TEETH
Just a few weeks ago we heard of a young British dentist – barely 30 years old – who was making a million a year out of fixing people’s gnashers. Everyone knows that dentists are well paid, and there are plenty of great places to learn this always-in-demand trade.

Charles University in Prague (www.cuni.cz) has dentistry programmes conducted in English that are fully recognised in the EU. At Comenius University in Bratislava (www.uniba.sk) you’re required to learn Slovakian for the first two years, but it should be worth it as Bratislava is a beautiful city, right on the Danube. The faculty of dentistry at Norway’s Oslo University (www.uio.no) operates its own dental clinic, and offers courses in English.

You’ll need to speak French for Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (http://portail.unice.fr), but then there’s always the beach after class and the casinos of Monte Carlo nearby to gamble away your student loan. Or you could opt for a course at Karolinska Institutet (www.ki.se) near Stockholm – one of Europe’s largest medical colleges.

A new life in…
SPORTS SCIENCE
Sports science combines an intimate knowledge of how bones and muscles work with cutting-edge technical know-how – and your gentle pulverisation of that next patient could turn him into the next Roger Federer. There are sports science degrees in Austria at one of the country’s oldest universities, Innsbruck (www.uibk.ac.at), and at the University of Salzburg (www.uni-salzburg.at). You can study this new trade at the University of Bologna in Italy (www.eng.unibo.it), too.

If you’re more of a sportsman than a sportsman’s friend, however, German Sport University Cologne (www.dshs-koeln.de) is a Mecca for gifted young athletes, and the biggest of its kind in the world. To get in, you may be required to run 100m in less than 13.4 seconds, which will be beyond your grasp if you’re currently nudging retirement and looking for more of a tranquil, winding-down career.

Finally, if you’re drawn to sports but throw a ball like a five-year-old girl, you can pick up all you need to know about sports management at the acclaimed University of Barcelona, (www.ub.edu), then go on to buy a football club with some rich Emirati friends!

A new life in…
FORENSICS
Fancy swapping your factory job for life with a trendy European police force, helping to find baddies using the latest criminology techniques? Of course you do, and thanks to the success of CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: Wigan, et al, the science of catching people by the minutiae they leave behind is on everyone’s radar.

One of the nicest ways to study this interesting-but-grim new vocation is on the sleepy island of Malta, where grins are wide and the sun is hot. University of Malta (www.um.edu.mt) started its Institute of Forensic Studies in 1993 but recently changed its name to Institute of Criminology because, we think, it sounds a bit cooler. Here, you can study a BA in Criminology and go on to help your local plod, and seeing as exactly 42% of all movies are now filmed in Malta (The Da Vinci Code, Gladiator, part of Spielberg flick Munich), it won’t be long before you’re raking it in as a consultant on some new Tom Cruise picture.

There’s also a criminology course at UAB in Barcelona (www.uab.es), and you can even take a PhD in the subject at Brussels’ Université Libre (www.ulb.ac.be), where we presume Hercule Poirot is the dean.

A new life in…
GROWING STUFF
If the world really is “going to hell in a handcart” (copyright, the Daily Mail), there’s no better knowledge worth acquiring than how to grow things so you can eat them. And sell them. And be a big hitter in the New World Order. Yet today’s student is also bombarded with technical guff, such as the science of chemicals and, possibly, how to rid the lower nine acres of those pesky travellers.

In France, there are agricultural schools, degrees and colleges all over the place, such as ISARALyon (www.isara.fr), founded in 1968 to train people in agriculture, rural development and the food industry. Graduates walk out with muddy hands and a master’s in Agricultural Engineering. There is a Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Turin, (www.unito.it) and one in Milan (www.agraria.unimi.it), in one of Italy’s top livestock-breeding regions.

And we can’t think of a better way to get farm-headed than to graduate in Spain, then sit back and tend – slowly – to the crops. Try the Polytechnic University of Madrid (www.upm.es), with “roots” going back to the 1800s, or ESAB (www.esab.upc.edu) in Barcelona, whose first course in 1912 had a class of just seven!

A new life in…
BUSINESS
Being part of the “rat race” in the UK is no fun at all, because of one thing: the traffic. Sure, the pay packet may be nice, but add bad weather, all those adverts on the radio – or the tss-tss-tss of people’s MP3 players if you’re using public transport – and it’s little wonder you arrive in the office a snarling mess of sweat and creased trousers.

What every exec is dreaming of is getting away, but early retirement in a Croatian farmhouse isn’t the answer. No, scholastic endeavours in more pleasant surroundings is. Set the family up in digs near the campus and once your studies are over, bag a plum job in your adopted country. One of the nicest places to improve your business acumen is HEC, near Paris (www.hec.edu). One of the best business schools in Europe, it is sited in a 121ha forest 20km from the capital. A sunnier place to swot is EADA in Barcelona (www.eada.edu), the only business school in Spain with an outdoor training centre. It even has an outdoor pool.

Finally, Nyenrode Business University (www.nyenrode.nl) in the Netherlands has a whole host of courses, including summer ones. It’s also housed in what looks like Harry Potter’s school… just buy a bike and start living.