Dober dan! (“Good day” in Slovene)
I did my exchange in the capital of Slovenia, in the University of Ljubljana. I studied three courses in the Faculty of Social work, and one course in the Faculty of Education. My courses were about social anthropology, sexual education, social work with older people and ethnically sensitive social work. I had to go to the campuses four days a week, to all together 5 lectures. The campus areas were located few kilometers apart, but I could easily travel to both of them by a city bike. Generally speaking, I liked the studying in Slovenia. Almost all my professors were very professional, as they all were also researchers in the university. The way how the courses were organized varied a lot, as they also do in Finland. The sexual education course included a lot of practical and group work, but the courses from the social work faculty mainly focused on lectures, reading and making research. We did not have to do much during the semester, but the online exams in June were pretty laborious.
The reason why I named the postcard after Slovenian mountains, was that the most important thing for me was to be able to hike in the beautiful and high mountains of the country. I have done mountain hiking as much as possible in the past few years, and my goal was to live somewhere near some mountains. Ljubljana was perfect for this. I found a good friend from Germany who has a car, so we went hiking with many different people one or even three times a week. Sometimes our hikes lasted the whole day and were physically exhausting, and sometimes we just wanted to visit some pretty place with the car and did only one- or two-hour walking. When my family and friends visited me, I also took them to hike and see some of the stunning places I had seen during my exchange. My physical fitness increased a lot, and I lived my absolute dream when spending time at the green and rocky mountain ranges.
Compared to Finland, life and studying in Slovenia was not that different. You go to lectures, you eat cheap food with university coupons in many restaurants in the city, you see your friends, do your own hobbies and you go to student parties if you want to. Two years ago, in my previous studies I did an exchange in the USA, and that life was really distinct to Finnish life. Maybe that is why this exchange felt much more familiar to the life in Finland, since I had already experienced something that was a culture shock back in the days. Also the fact that it is likely that you meet and talk to (even run into) finnish people during your exchange, makes it feel much less like an isolation from Finland. For me personally, the nature and the mountains made my time, and I already had the experience from an exchange actually further away. If I would have not had the US experience, I would have gone somewhere far. I REALLY recommend everyone to do an exchange or two. You will not have these opportunities many times in your life. Take them, do not waste them.
Hvala val Slovenia<3 (thank you a lot)
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