Greetings from the beautiful Slovene Istria! Slovene Istria is a region in southwest of Slovenia that covers all the coastline to the Adriatic Sea. Though the coastline is teeny-tiny (only 47 kilometres!), we’ve got everything – historic cities, sea, vineyards, nature parks, beaches, Mediterranean food and let’s not forget the warmest weather in Slovenia!
My city Koper is almost next to the Italian border and that’s why everyone here knows how to speak Italian and actually, it is is easier to find Italian than Slovenian food here. I have also noticed that the closeness of Italy can also be seen in the relaxed atmosphere. The population rate of Koper is only 25,000, but we have an amazing group of nearly 80 Erasmus students here. Our local student organization is really active and taking incredibly good care of us. But it’s not only the student organization, but the Erasmus students themselves too. We spend a lot of time together and since the distances are really short to different parts of Slovenia and other countries too, we have been travelling quite a lot.
Since I am a public health nurse student and doing practical training here, I am going to tell you something about that. Firstly, everybody who sees my name tag and the title on it, start laughing or ask me to pronounce ‘terveydenhoitajaopiskelija’. I consider myself really lucky, that the language barrier has created more funny than frustrating situations like that. I already finished my first practice in Splošna bolnišnica Izola in an internal medicine ward. At first, there weren’t too many nurses that spoke in English, but in the last couple weeks I guess they started to feel more confident doing that. In the same ward was also two Slovenian students, that I made friends with, and they were helping me all the time. Now I’m doing my second and last practice in a health center. It just started, so I don’t have a lot to say, but the first impression was good. People are so nice here!
Instead of summing this post up, I’m going to tell you something funny about Slovenians. When we are trying to do something in the same pace in Finland, we usually count from one to three. What Slovenians do, they count “three, four, now!” instead. After hearing this, they told me that Slovenians are special, and they sure are!
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