I have been on my exchange in Madrid since the late August. Madrid is definitely a busy, lively city where the tapas culture is shining and people like going out. No matter what is the weather or day of the week, the main street Gran Vía is always packed and shops and pubs open until late.
My studies here have been both business and tourism courses. The tourism courses were completely independent studying and doing research, and we didn’t have any lessons. The business courses were more traditional, theoretical learning and going to classes.
Studying in Madrid compared to my home university TAMK is different. First of all, no teacher has an attendance list and they say it is up to us if we want to attend the lessons or not. It has no effect on the final grade, the only thing that matters is to study the theory and pass the exam. Teaching was very theoretical and mainly the teacher was talking and students listening. We rarely had any discussions in the class.
Anyway, there still was something that reminded me of TAMK very much, group works. For example on Commercial Management course we had to create our own product and make a sales plan for it. The other students had to vote for the best presentation but still one month later we don’t know who won. But it’s usual here that things happen on a great delay.
Especially in September and October, when school was not busy at all, I had a lot of time to travel around Spain. One of the best memories is when we hired a car with some other exchange students and drove down to Costa del Sol which is a 150 km long coast in the south of Spain. We visited several beautiful beaches and amazing cities on the way. I have also visited a couple of other countries as well, like the Netherlands and Switzerland. It is so nice that many of my friends are on their exchange as well and it’s easy to go to visit them!
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