Columnist Susan Snyder: Students betting on the house

Friday, June 8, 2001 | 5:23 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column also appears Tuesdays and Fridays in the Las Vegas Sun. Reach her at snyder@vegas.com or 259-4082.

Hendrik Frobel's girlfriend is in a pickle.

Burcu Ulzel, a 20-year-old resident of Hannover, Germany, has a passport, plane ticket and internship at a Las Vegas hotel. But as of right now, she has nowhere to live while she learns how a hotel-casino operates.

If she doesn't find a host family by Thursday, the German government won't let her come. And Frobel, also 20, will board the airplane without her June 24.

"Burcu and I want to go into the hospitality industry," Frobel said during a telephone call Wednesday. "She wants to get first-hand experience there and a good reference from it."

Ulzel has lined up a 13-month internship at the Fremont Hotel. It's not paid, but she will receive two meals each work day. Germany covers her medical insurance and she will provide her own spending money, Frobel said.

"The place where she will stay doesn't have to be for the whole 13 months. If they can cover even the first two or three months, we would be happy about that," Frobel said. "I've e-mailed your churches and high schools, but I've received nothing back."

Frobel says they consider the Fremont Hotel's offer a generous one, as most of the area's hospitality internships seemed to be taken by students already enrolled UNLV's program for such study.

Ulzel will be new to the United States, but Frobel isn't. He lived in Dallas for a year as a high school exchange student. He's an amateur magician and visited Las Vegas four times for magic conventions. He says it didn't take long for him to figure out that Las Vegas and the hotel industry is where he wants to make his mark.

"It was my dream to live in Las Vegas when I have finished high school in Germany. I made my dream come true," Frobel wrote in an e-mail he sent last week.

Frobel explained that after high school Germany's young men must serve 13 months in the military or work as social-service volunteers. They can do this service in another country, so Frobel chose ours.

When he arrives he and a male German friend will work for Candlelighters for Childhood Cancer, a nonprofit group that offers education, financial and emotional support for children who have the disease. Afterward he plans to enroll in UNLV's hotel and hospitality program.

A Candlelighter spokeswoman says Frobel and a male friend who is also joining him, will stay with one of the group's board members during their service. The board member simply does not have room for a third student, she said.

Ulzel already has paid $2,000 for a visa, $1,000 for the airline ticket and has filled out reams of German paperwork for the privilege of working here free, just to learn a new skill. Her boyfriend is shelling out a similar amount of money just to volunteer in our community.

They seem to have done their part. How many of us would work as hard to be here?

Frobel says anyone who might be able to offer Ulzel a temporary place to stay should contact him by e-mail. The address is frobelh@yahoo.de.

Her deadline is Thursday, but Germany is nine hours ahead of us. So they probably need to know by Wednesday whether someone can help.

"It would be great if you could help Burcu to make one of her dreams come true," Frobel said.