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
Confused
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