Current Mood: Cool & Grinning

Time to wrap up what was left in hand from my exchange in Bratislava in Spring 2008 so here we go.

First that comes to mind of course is the traveling there and back. Going wasn’t that bad really as my flight left in the afternoon and landed in the evening on Friday. Coming back on the other hand was more tricky as the plane left at 6am so by following the common courtesy, I had to be at the airport at 4am and since it took close to 1 hour to get there, I had to be on my way at 3am. Considering that the Euro 2008 final was played the previous da and I had woken up at 1pm the day before, I’m sure it doesn’t come as a surprise to say that I didn’t really get any sleep. So I ended up staying up like 30 hours straight until I just passed out at my parents’ couch. I remember being woken up at some point with my mom asking if I should go to bed and apparently I had opened my eyes, looked lost and wandered to toilet and bed. I assume it felt like I thought I was still in Bratislava and was confused to see my parents’ house

City itself was big. That was my first impression. It’s not like Rovaniemi or Tornio where you can get from the other end of the city central to the other in a couple of minutes by car. It took like 25 minutes to get from Botanicka to Polus which I consider passing through the most intense city central. Buildings clearly had that communism effect with them as they were mostly just blocks and old. But a lot of construction sites could be spotted with paint job on its way. But then again, this old style is what it’s all about really. It gives off history and stories. When you walk down the old city centre, the streets are really like from one or two hundred years back. So even though you might not like old stuff, have a look.

Druzba which was our dormitory, was really nice when you got the hang of it. Before I left, I was really confused as the exchange students we get, had to live with a roommate. I thought that I couldn’t do it, but I lived with 2 roommates. We had 2 floors basically for the exchange students. 4th floor was completely for the exchangees and half of the 3rd was for us as well. There were about 30 doors in each room and each of them had 2 more doors inside. And behind those two doors lived 2-3 students. I think it was 3 in all of them. So we had 6 exchangees behind each of these 30 rooms. That makes over 200 exchange students in overall. Oh and we need to count in the ones that lived in the other building, Druzba II. All the South Americans, Africans, Asians and other non-Erasmus students lived there. Druzba buildings also had hotel guests and just random Slovak students.
My roommates were Cristian (Brazil/Spain), Vojtech (Czech) and in the other room were Curro (Spain), Pepiño (Spain) and Vlado (Slovakia). Really nice and relaxed lads. We had a really nice atmosphere all the time and all (well at least most) did their share of the responsibilities. In overall, really good vibe from the whole thing.

As for the rooms… Kitchen, toilet and shower were shared. I think the worse thing about the whole thing was that we had 6 people and the fridge was this less than 1×1x1 meter box. There was no way that all of us could have used it. Well when I came, I had a look at the place and decided that I wouldn’t be doing too much cooking over there. It was small, we only had one hot plate and I didn’t have any equipment. Sure the guys were willing to lend me necessary equipment whenever I needed them, but I just preferred going somewhere to eat or like at the end, I ate tons of noodles

Other services we had were a laundry room. The price for using the machine was from 40 SKK to 60 SKK I think, I used the 50 SKK programme all the time. Sometimes the machines were not working as some used this string+superglue+10 SKK coin trick which caused the machine slot machine to clog. I never did it as I had plenty of 10 SKK coins anyway.

People in Bratislava were generally really nice and friendly. Oh, and first I got to mention: girls were extremely beautiful! I don’t know if it’s the bone structure (with the girls) or the mentality (in general), but Slovaks seems really discipline to work and succeed in life. Suppose the history has taught them a lot. The one thing that lacked was the language barrier. In general, the English language seemed to cause a lot of trouble to most of the people. I don’t know if they didn’t want to use it or what, but students were pretty much the only ones that used it.

Which brings me to next issue: Slovak language. It helped me at first to know that the pronounciation of the alphabets was quite alike to Finnish language so I didn’t really have too much trouble pronouncing the words. Sure there were some odd things such as the long versions of words and some small differences in the letter pronounciations, but in general I think I did good with the whole thing. I got a B from the exam too. But all though I know a lot of words now, I just don’t know how to form sentences. The Slovak grammar is just wicked!

Nightlife in Slovakia is pretty good. You don’t need too much money to drink, a lot of places to go in quite a small area, nice number of people in every place and the exchange students of course lift the party in every place they go. One thing I even noticed when I got back and first time went into a nightclub, was how empty it felt and how I missed the Slovak nightlife. Coming back and paying 5 times more for a smaller beer felt like robbery! But I suppose it takes some time to adjust back to all this.
To curious people, I will list some prices (approximately average according to places where I went and how much I paid during my trip):
- beer (0,5l): 30 SKK = 1 euro (pub and store)
- vodka shot (0,04l): 25 SKK = 0,85 euro? (Casey prize) / 0,5l bottle in a shop was about 150 SKK which is about 5 euros
I think that was pretty much all I had. I did buy some drinks there as well, some expensive, some cheap. Depends usually how you come out as… foreigner or local

Prices in Bratislava are pretty ok. Food and generally about the same as in Finland when you go to a restaurant. Drinking is of course cheaper as I mentioned above. Cigarettes are about half the price. Traveling is a bit cheaper I think.

Our school was this big building next to the ice hockey team Slovan Bratislava’s home arena, Samsung Arena (or Zimny Stadium). Green, that’s what I got from the school. It was middleschool all over again (that school was green all over as well). Teachers were usually old(ish) and had quite ok English though we had some communication problems every now and then. Courses were pretty demanding, but for exchange students it was all really easy!

Health was decent the whole time. I just had to bring this up since I had troubles with my knee. Well the knee was good all the time apart from small aches in the beginning or when I had to catch a tram and run a few meters. But basically I had no trouble with my knee. Though I did hurt my right ankle during the last week there. It was raining a lot and we went to this place called Dezmar (not sure how to spell it right) and after a few beers and tequilas, I came down the stairs which were wet and fell down half-way and came down a meter or two with my right ankle under my ass or something. Left a nice ache :/

Greetings to people!
I just have to send my best to all the people at Druzba! It was a great pleasure to meet you all and I will always remember you guys! Ralf, Andy, Tiago, Jan, Big J, Alex, Diego, Elena, Natka, Katka, Curro, Pepe, Pawel, Bogdan, Mathieu, Cristian, Yaga, Magda, Justyna,  Ewelina, Francesco… Ummm, sorry can’t remember everyone right now, but ya know who ya are!
PS: Are you ya going to Casey?!

I think that’s about it now. If you have questions about something, leave a comment.