Greetings from Lucerne! The autumn semester is approaching the end and time give you a quick look to my life as an exchange student in Switzerland.
I studied at HSLU (Hocschule Luzern), School of Business. My studies here was combination of international economics, finance and also some German. Quick fact that although Swiss schools and universities teach High German language, the local Swiss people speaks Swiss-German, which is quite different and often even Germans can not understand them. Studying business here compared to that in Finland was more detailed theory based and more individual work. In Finland studying is more group work based and not going usually to that little details, rather focusing real experiences. All my classes were taught in English. The lectures here were in person, which was really nice after over a year of online studies in Finland. It was also possible to participate the classes online, but it was contactless, which means that the lecturer didn’t take any contact to persons participating online.
The city is located in central Switzerland right where the alps starts. 1 hour away from capital Bern and Zürich. I lived in a student housing shared flat about 8 minutes train ride away from city centre of Lucerne. In my free time I really got into hiking with other international students from all around the world. Basically in Switzerland and close to alps, you could just start walking up from anywhere and you would end up with a spectacular view. And most of the times you don’t even need any special equipments to do it, just a bit of physical fitness. There are also plenty of cable cars available to use get to the summits, but most of them are ridiculously expensive. The country is relatively small, the public transport works really well and trains goes to even really small towns in the mountains, but it is kinda expensive. Just Lucerne public transport area ticket for one month costs depending of your age between 60-80 CHF (Approximately 55-75 EUR). I did spend some time going around the places and cities. I also visited quickly in Germany and Italy.
Other free time activities have been skiing, hanging around with other international students and some locals as well and participating all kind of events what the local Erasmus Student Network ESN Luzern had organized. This included city tours, hikes, amusement park and cabin weekend in the mountains for example.
The best thing about the exchange have been the people who I have the chance to get to know. It gives so much more perspective to everything when you meet people from other countries and cultures. Start share thoughts with them both ways. With many of them keeping in touch afterwards as well.
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