Posted under Life In Motion
My knee operation has been postponed until 11th of August. I don’t know the reason, but it has. But it’s only one week and on 8th of August, I will be taking some tests. I don’t know what but could be my knee movement and some blood tests.
Anyway, no worries 
Posted under Bratislava Exchange
Pheef, it’s 5:30am and I can’t sleep. I’m really tired, I’ve been really tired all day. But I just couldn’t sleep… Been in the bed since midnight. Saw a movie too… Apocalypse Now. Masterpiece really.
I tried figuring out some more topics I would like to write here about. So on the way back from Polus City Centre (a mall), I started looking around the place for things that might remind me about some topics I want to tell about. I came up with plenty of stuff so to get things started, here’s a couple of them for starters…
Cheese. Yes, you got it right. It says cheese. I don’t know the nationality for the cheese, but… First I thought it was the fridge in our flat that was smelling horrible when I first smelled it. But then I noticed the same smell in Tesco’s cheese department. It’s like a rottening smell that makes you want to puke. Now, apparently it can be just me since a lot of people are buying that stuff plus cheese is really popular here with food. But I can’t stand the smell it has. I don’t know the brand of that cheese either and I normally like cheese, but this smell is just awful 
TIP: No tip really. Smell it yourself and be the judge.
Weather. Despite the variety of different weathers you have over here and the possibility of the weather changing drastically every day, I like it a lot. It’s warm and since I came here, I haven’t seen snow for more than maybe 3 minutes. It has been snowing, I think 3 times and twice of them before I woke up. Those two times, the snow melted away pretty fast. And the third time was when there was a slight, like a 5 minute “storm” when it snowed. But it went by quite fast too.
But what I love over here the most are the sunny days. They’re just pure awesomeness. Coming here in February was a good idea in a way because in February there’s like +10 degrees every day and the temperature doesn’t go much below 0 even during the nights. And now in May, sunny days have like close to 30 degrees. But what I hate about the sunny days is that there’s a lot of pollen in the air. But surprisingly enough, it hasn’t really affected me with my allergy for pollen.
TIP: Depending on where you’re from, the weather is pretty good (considering that I’m Finnish). Not much snow really and the temperature is good. So basically my thick jacket was really useless as were the long underwear. But then again, if my knee was ok, I might have gone skiing to Tatra’s when the jacket and underwear would have been good. So consider the weather when you pack your stuff.
Okay, I will bring up a third topic as well. Lets see… I mentioned Polus earlier so lets talk about malls. Bratislava has two main malls: Aupark and Polus City Centre. Aupark is the bigger one in case you wondered
I personally like them both. Aupark is really huge and it’s a shoppers paradise really. Polus on the other hand is a bit smaller, but quite big as well. I like Polus’ food restaurants actually as they have a nice variety of different food types in one part of the whole mall. McDonalds, Slovak food, Thai food, Asian restaurant, pizza and my personal favourite - Santa Fe. They make this wicked burrito with chicken, salad and so on. Really good and with a medium sized drink, it costs 109 SKK which is about 3,5 euros. Also I have to recommend the pizzeria over there called Pizza Pazza. The pizzas are just delicious and the service is really professional. Extra plus for the English menus which are surprisingly rare here in Ba. Tomato, cheese, ham, egg and salami on a pizza = awesome!
Aupark’s food selection is ok too, but I really don’t like what they have over there. Well ok, a couple of weeks ago we wandered to this Asian restaurant (called Sunshine) over there and they had this rice-egg-chicken stuff which I just love so points for that
Apart from the eating, both malls of course have tons of shops from baby clothes to jewelry and African souvenirs to a shop called Pink. Yea, you can guess what Pink sells… it’s all with the color pink
Now the closest thing to a mall I’ve seen in Finland is probably Sampokeskus in Rovaniemi. But its size compared to these two over here is just…small. So if you ever happen to be in Bratislava. Go to Aupark or Polus!
TIP: Guys! Never ever go to a mall with a girl! You should know this, but just to make sure. Sure it depends on what kind of a girl we’re talking about, but still… Unless you want to wind up bored and exhausted (the next 2 to infinite hours), avoid going to a mall with a girl after a “lets go to a mall just for fun” suggestion
Okay, I think that’s it for now. It’s 6am… Am not really that tired now, but am really thirsty so might just go to the gas station to get something to drink
Or maybe sleep a bit and then go to Polus for a burrito! (checks for opening hours) 
Posted under Life In Motion
Coming here was one of the best things in my life. Before I came or even considered for an exchange program, my tutor friends in Finland said that “you need to experience it, it’s one of the things that needs to be done in your lifetime”. Surely I was suspicious about it so it took some time for me to decide anything. But then with the school not doing so great back home and the urge for going traveling, it just felt right to have a look around the possibilities and pick a destination. Now, I’ve been through the reasons for different destinations so I will not go into it now.
Settling in to a new country and culture has been… a challenge if something. Sure the other students from abroad settle in quite fast. Being from a big city helps a lot, but me from a city that has 25 000 people, it’s a challenge. Consider that I’ve been living in Rovaniemi for a couple of years now, but Rovaniemi has about 60 000 people. I don’t know if it’s the whole area or what, but still. Tornio has 25 000 which isn’t a lot when you come to a city with over 500 000 people like Bratislava.
So settling in to Bratislava took its time. Trams and local public transportation are quite unnecessary in cities like Rovaniemi or Tornio. Rovaniemi has a public transportation system, but I’ve found it unnecessary since the area I usually travel within is like a couple of kilometers. So a bike is enough. Here trams, busses and trolleybusses are everyday life. To be honest, I haven’t seen too many bikes over here. People walk, take trams or busses. That’s it. So getting to know the tram and bus stops was the first thing I had to do. I noticed that the trams (which I use most of the time) go like every 10 mins unless you want to go somewhere further when you need to have a look at the exact trams. But practically from here, there are 3-5 trams that can take you pretty much everywhere. And if that’s not enough, bus stop is just next to tram stop and they can take you at least to Novy Most (ufo bridge).
A 3 month public transportation card costs around 1500 SKK which is about 50 euros. This is not a student price which I’m not eligible for as I’m over 26 years old
TIP: If you’re not familiar with the local transportation system in bigger cities, get to know them. It’s pretty simple really. Just see where your end stop is or the closest one to your destination, find out the timetables and hop on to a tram or a bus. And if possible, get a 1-6 month(s) card for the transportation system. You will rather have that than buy separate tickets everytime you want to get on to a bus or a tram. Might sound really simple to people living in big cities, but to us from smaller cities or towns with no local public transportation, it can be a big step to get to know the system. At least to me it was as I’ve never used it.
Secondly I’ve to bring up language. I’m able to speak English, Finnish and some Swedish. Swedish is useless here and the only time I used it was during the Slovak lesson as we had a Swedish teacher here teaching Swedish. And Finnish… Well, I’ve been using it with the odd few Finnish exchange students we’ve had here. Basically with Jan and Leena who are living here in Druzba as well. Though Jan left like 2 weeks ago back to Finland. But that’s it for the Finnish language. So English has been used everyday over here. My Slovak skills are not that good to even begin or participate a conversation
As for other people, Slovaks don’t generally know much English or don’t just want to use it. Students use it quite a lot and pretty good at it too, but if you go to a nearby gas station, pub, bar, grocery store… no. They can’t speak it at all or don’t even want to try. Which one it is, I don’t know.
TIP: So if possible, learn some Slovak before you come here as it will be useful. Or for any country really, learn the local language. Just some basics.
I will continue these once I get some more to write about
Posted under Bratislava Exchange
Posted under Bratislava Exchange
Current Mood: 
Cool
Yawn. Lazyness really got to me here and am too… well lazy to add pictures here or write at all
But my family was here a couple of weeks ago and I got some new pictures. Devin Castle pictures you might have seen already from my previous post(s), here we go with some pictures from Vienna and Bratislava with Devin Castle:
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