Erasmus in Ljubljana, Slovenia

After a little break a new blog post is here – and now in English, thus for wider audience. By the way, I have to practice before writing my master thesis :).

Today, I would like to write something about our Erasmus exchange. Maybe somebody of you doesn't know that a week after coming back from USA, me & Sharka, we went to Ljubljana via the Erasmus exchange program. You may ask why we chose Ljubljana. So, it was because we wanted to go together and our universities both had an agreement with the University of Ljubljana.

We stayed in dorms, Sharka in the dorm opposite her faculty and me in the one closer to mine. Our dorms were ultimately for Erasmus students, so it meant a lot of parties. In my dorm, everything was shared. At least toilets, showers, kitchen, but sometimes people thought that even my locker in front of my room was shared, so they opened it. Despite that, dorm was nice with new furniture. We had a maid service which cleaned shared space every day, but unfortunately, only at weekdays. So, sometimes at weekends there was a big mess, especially when somebody used a fire extinguisher. My room was right next to the kitchen, where parties took place almost every day, but the walls were pretty thick, so the noise was not that big :). Actually, I heard that on some other floors in the dorm, the parties were much harder.

In Sharka’s dorm, two rooms shared a kitchen and a bathroom, and the dorm was very nice. To be honest, I partied there more than in my dorm even though my dorm was more party prone. We met there quite good group of people, mostly girls.

We met a lot of good people, we had amazing roommates and, as a consequence, now we have to visit some more countries :D. I'm thankful for my amazing roommate Piotr (best one ever). He was from Poland, so it is one of those countries we have to visit.

During our stay in Ljubljana we arranged some trips as it is very usual during the Erasmus exchange. Actually, in Slovenia, you can see a lot because it has a good location, offers seaside, mountains, caves, valleys; also it is close to Italy, Croatia, and Alps. We went to see amazing lake, visited seaside, cave, waterfalls and a castle.

Car rentals offered special discounts for Erasmus students, so we rented cars twice. Once we went 10 people on two cars to the seaside and second time, when our friends from Slovakia came to visit us, we rented a car for 7 people. Despite the heaviest rain while there was flooding in Slovenia, we went to see the castle, cave and Italian port Trieste. We enjoyed both trips, with our good friend “demižón” in the trunk :D.

Slovenia is quite nice country, and Ljubljana is a beautiful city. However, I don’t understand why the country is such a famous tourist destination. I think Slovakia has a lot more to offer, but probably we have some problem with the promotion. Actually, the countries are quite similar, except Slovenia has a tiny sea coast. OK, we have also our Slovak sea :D.

I cannot forget to mention awesome student meals system in Slovenia. Students in Slovenia (including Erasmus students) can eat in the restaurants all around the country which offer special student menus for discounted prices. And these menus include usually soup, main dish, salad and a desert. So, we enjoyed eating in Chinese, Mexican, Italian or Brazilian restaurants, just to mention some.

The main reason why I wanted to study abroad was because of the education itself. Although, many other students go on exchange because of parties – true especially for Erasmus program – I wanted to gain some knowledge from it. I wanted to try foreign educational system, try new university and, mostly, try studying in English (even though in Brno I had some subjects in English).

Now, after it has finished, I can say I’m satisfied with my studies in Slovenia. I studied at the Faculty of Computer and Information Science at the University of Ljubljana. Many people at the faculty wanted me to compare it to my home faculty, if it is better or not. And my usual reply was: “It depends.” Both have some pros and cons. However, I like the idea that I was studying there only for one semester and I could choose only the best subjects, and I absolutely took advantage of it. I did amazing projects during the semester and I learnt a lot of new things. To be honest, this is a big difference between the faculties, that in Ljubljana every course requires a lot of work, has exercises, projects, homework, assignments, etc. I realized that being enrolled in only 4 courses I had only a little free time (read as: time for working for my job :D).

My personal opinion is that my home faculty, Faculty of Informatics at Masaryk University Brno, is probably slightly better. I like our recorded lectures, ability to choose subjects, lecture held by experts from real companies and our unbeatable Information System. But as I mentioned, I loved my subjects in Ljubljana and I learnt a lot.

So to conclude, studying abroad was amazing experience and I recommend everybody to try it. Additionally, Erasmus program is unbelievable opportunity because you are even paid for it. And now, let’s dive back into reality…back home.