Current Mood: Confused & Cool & Flirtatious & Grinning

Ahojte! (oh and that means “hey ya” or something and as for the “ba” in post title, it means Bratislava, shortened)

Well, it’s been awhile again. It’s not that I didn’t have anything to say. It’s just that I’ve been too lazy to write anything. And I got the pictures last week from Jan (the another Finnish guy here) and due to the fact that the Internet connection can be really slow at times here, it took some time to upload the pictures too. But here we go:

So, first things first. Pictures will be in the next post as there are plenty of them and I didn’t want the post to become a novel or anything.

I got to say this… The weather! It’s friggin’ great! Coming from Finland with snow storming all over with like -10 degrees… And here it’s usually around +10 degrees. The past few days around +16. Just the way I like it to be in February

I finally got the public transportation card which is a huge deal here. I don’t really like getting like 14 SKK (about 50 cents) in coins everytime I want to go somewhere so instead I got this card for about 1700 SKK (about 60 euros). I was supposed to get the card for students, which would have been cheaper, but since I’m over 26, I can’t get it. So practically, I’m too old to be a student here

Second, the beer… Yummy! 27 SKK (about 90 cents [yea, 1 euro is about 30 SKK if you didn’t figure it out just yet]) in the pub “downstairs”. I say downstairs since these two buildings are like together (Druzba 1 and Druzba 2) and I live in D2 and the pub is in D1. So to get there, here are the directions for your amusement:
- get out of the room and walk ~15 meters to the elevators
- go down 5 floors, get out of the elevator and walk 20 meters to door taking outside
- walk 100m and you’re in front of the pub

Sooooo… Pretty simple, ehh?

Then… Well I was sick the past few days so I didn’t go to school yesterday, but I did today as I had “Marketing”. The teacher didn’t show up so went to talk to the coordinator and asked if she knew where he was. She made a quick phone call and told us to go back in front of the classroom. And so it began, 30mins late but so what. He just gave us the briefing of our course and that’s it. As for the school in overall… We’re not really well informed about the changes in timetables/schedules nor are we told about class cancellations. So at least I’ve been a bit lost lately, but I’m sure it’ll be ok.

As for other matters, I attended to this guided Bratislava tour like 2 weeks ago (so you see how late I’m?) and it was just superb. We had this brief meeting at the main Comenius Uni building and some big shot told us about the school, classes, student life and how to behave. Then we got these backpacks that had some bread and drinks inside + quite a few books about Slovakia and Bratislava (really useful!). Then we headed off and hopped in to a bus that took us to around the city to Devin Castle. I really don’t know much about the place, but it’s cool from a Finnish point of view. I mean you don’t see that at least in the Northern-Finland

Then we had a brief look around the city a bit. Walking around the old city and checking out some of the really cool places. I don’t know about others, but somehow seeing a historical surrounding such as the old city in Ba… Wow! I mean sure there are buildings that are like made of windows practically and are very modern. But to walk down the old streets and seeing these old buildings around you, it’s remarkable to notice that unlike where I come from, the history down here goes so far that you actually start to feel like “erm, am I in Bratislava or are some medieval knights coming to beat me up soon?”. It feels so real and the feeling is so unreal that you just need to experience it yourself (at least the ones that have lived behind daddy’s wallet their whole youth).

What else… Just did my first big cleaning around the room while Cristian (my Brazilian roommate) was in school. Just wiped off some dust and organized the shelfs a bit. As since I came here, we’ve just been here and not really done too much to clean it up. So now the room actually looks like a place where someone could live in. Not that the room wasn’t acceptable before!

Am still pissed off about my leg. There are people every day playing football, basketball or something similar just next to us. My knee has swollen a bit since I came here, due to a lot of walking. Which reminds me… I did this long walk last Monday when I left school. I just walked from my school over to Aupark. So in total about 5km (rough guess). It was a good chance to look around the city and just navigate yourself through it. Since as you might imagine, the city is quite big for me, a guy coming from a 25000 inhabitant city. But the knee… I’ll survive.

Erm… Lets go back to drinking and beer. Beer in the gas station across the road. A can of half a liter with 10% alcohol (someone said that it’s not the alcohol percentage, but apparently it is) beer called Corgon, 22 SKK. So about 80 cents… As a Finn, this is friggin’ awesome! And in a pub, you don’t have to pay more than 30-40 SKK for a beer. That’s like 3 times cheaper what we pay for it in Rovaniemi on a regular night. So this is like a constant 1 euro beer night for me and Jan. Not that we’re drunks or anything! *whistles*
Also I will propably never forget, but 2 weeks ago I went to this club nearby, Casey. I was pretty drunk, but didn’t mind as I only had Jagermeister and Red Bull… One Jagermeister was about 100 SKK (4cl) and a 2dl Red Bull. So I mixed them always (not 1:1) and at the end, I had like 10+ Jagermeisters
And another good tip is to get a vodka (4cl) and mix it with something. One vodka costs 25 SKK which is really low and gets right to your head!
The most popular days for drinking and partying here are… Everyday! But basically the days when people go out to club or a pub are Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Sometimes Thursday as well, but the party is in Mlynska Dolina which is about 3km away from here. But basically if you feel like partying, just ask around and someone knows one

As for the food… There’s a diner attached to this whole complex, but to be honest, I don’t really like the food there. Though I’ve only been there once, but it was more like military food and then some. So I use this buffet next door every now and then to get some fried cheese with fries. Healthy? No, but does the trick for 100 SKK (with a Coca-Cola). In the city centre there’s this Europa Pub, which is really nice and you can get pasta, pizza etc from there for a reasonable price. Plus it has a pub called Slovak Pub attached to it which is a popular student pub.

As for the people here in Bratislava… I hate that I can’t speak Slovak and quite a few people here speak decent English. So communication problems occure every now and then, but nearly all exchange students I’ve met here, speak good English and are good giving advices. Plus I’ve made friends with some students who’ve been here since September and speak a bit Slovak.

In overall… I like it here so far. Sure there are some problem, but they are so small that don’t bother for too long. Such as standing in a crowded tram, bus transportation systems, problems with the school classes and some miscellaneous practical everyday issues. My school schedule for the week is really simple: 9,5 hours on Monday and an hour on Tuesday morning + Slovak course every Tuesday and Thursday at 6pm for like 5-6 weeks. The rest I’ve free

Now, I’m off to my 3rd Slovak class so I will post the pictures in my next post a bit later. Might “have to” take a few drinks today