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.

Anyway, here are some pictures from the trip…

Pictures from the city centre on our way to the fanzone. Though the first one is actually from Bratislava train station.

Yet again, from the city centre. These Austrian fans were LOUD, but looked like they had fun so I guess it’s ok. Besides I don’t think there was a minute in the city when you heard something related to Germany or Austria :)
Oh and the escalators… I’ve never been to a metro/subway (at least from what I remember and we don’t have such things in Rovaniemi or Tornio) so just as an impulse, I took a picture of these. We actually tried getting a metro to the train station, but the problem was that we ran out of time and had to use a tram instead.

Yet again, pictures of the fans and city centre. In the middle is Mr. R.

City centre, city centre, city centre… Actually if you look close to the guy in the middle picture, you see a nice mohawk :)

Nice car, eh? And then some big private yard in the middle. Austrian fans on the right.

Never seen this yellow can before so I just took a picture of it with our Slovak friend, Zlaty Bazant. Me and Mr. R got our German flags on our cheeks and since they were so proud of me supporting Germany, we took a picture. You know, this doesn’t happen too often. Bloody Germans… :D

A close picture of the flags and the favourite guy in the audience… This Austrian guy painted his body and was photographed a lot among the audience. Nice job though, got to give him that :)

Holland won their group, that’s for sure. 6 points out of 6 and they beat both, Italy and France. And Romania drew against both which secures Oranje’s group victory.
Then, If we look at group D where Spain and Sweden are playing along with Russia and Greece. Spain won Russia 4-1 and Sweden beat Greece 2-0. This would mean that the winner of tonight’s game between Spain and Sweden will win the group unless they draw their game and Greece beats Russia and Spain or Russia beats Greece and Sweden, but that’s just highly unlikely.

So in order to make this thing interesting and to get a really good reason to go to Vienna:

Sweden needs to win tonight which would draw them against the runner-up of group C. That would be either Italy, Romania or France. All of these have the chance, though Romania is playing their last game against Holland so most likely the runner-up will be decided between Italy and France. This game would be played on 22st of June in Vienna.
And then the winner of Group C, Holland, would play against the runner-up of group D, which would be Spain. On 21st of June in Basel.

Then on to next stage where it gets interesting!

Winner of both matches play against eachother on 26th of June in Vienna. Can’t express the joy if that would be Holland versus Sweden! Those yellow pudel boys would get their ass kicked by Oranje!

Börje, Åke, Svensson, Larsson, Gustafsson… Here I come! MUHAHAHAHAHA! *continuous evil laugh*

And just as an example, here’s a picture for you to see what I mean:

See what I mean… That’s D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S! :P

Sure I’ve some “additional preferences” that I’ve had for years and will still keep with myself, but over here I’ve just been totally Ralf’ed and it seems inevitable that I will take this heritage to Finland with me :)
We’ll see how long this “mania” lasts in my case :)
Toni out, wispekt!

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) :P

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 :)

So here I end this lovely tour around the Devin Castle. I hope you enjoyed and stay tuned for an update from 2nd location which I haven’t decided yet.