Back 2 school
It’s been two weeks now since school officially started and it’s been one heck of a ride. My daily schedule has been so hectic that I haven’t even had the time/energy to sit down and write this blog. There has been some bad moments, some unbelievable moments (in so many ways..), but most of all, some really nice experiences.
Taking care of Nikke's paperwork
Niklas (my roommate here and classmate in Finland) arrived in the 30th of September and it’s been really nice having someone familiar to talk to. I helped him with all the paperwork, translations where to get what and such, because I was pretty much done with all that already, so it was easy for me to point him to the right direction and to keep him from making the same mistakes as I did. 
The lectures during the first week were mainly just introductions to the courses and getting to know one another. I also had to change one of my courses because of schedule overlapping, so instead of doing Corporate Finance course, I’m now on Marketing Innovation and it seems like an awesome course. It’s rare to see that kind of enthusiasm from a lecturer.
During my first week in Zagreb I promised myself that I would go to check out the Zoo in Maksimir park, but I totally forgot about the whole thing, until Nikke told me that “There’s a zoo in the nearby park! We should go!” And so, we did! We went there on 6th of October, and we got the perfect weather for the day!
Click to see pictures
After the Zoo, we met up with other Erasmus students and wandered around the park. After a while we stopped by or a cup of coffee and there we met the rudest waiter ever! When there was so many of us, he was so annoyed that he had to take that many orders and when one of the girls tried to ask for another cup of coffee, he quickly replied “I don’t care.. I’m on a break” and lifted his hands in the air. HOWEVER, as the night went on and we had such fun at the coffee shop, the waiter changed completely and he actually ended up buying three bottles of wine for us and also a round of the local liquor, rakia for everyone. It was so much fun. Unfortunately my camera batteries were dying, so I couldn’t take too many pictures of the night..
Our brave&extr3me hiking group!
Independence hike!
On Croatia’s independence day 8th of October, ENS Zagreb organized a hike to the top of Medvednica, which is a mountain very close to Zagreb. It was really funny, because I just had talked to Nikke about going up there and then they decided to organize it for us. Perfect timing As my batteries had ran out from my camera, I didn’t take any pictures myself on the hike, but I downloaded a couple of pics from Facebook that people had uploaded of the event. Take a look!
Click to see pictures
Looking at those pictures really make me want to buy a new camera!
So, you think you know Zagreb?
Two crazy Finnish tourists!
Me and Nikke decided to participate on another funny Erasmus event called “So you think you know Zagreb? quiz”. The quiz took place in Zagreb on 13th of October and the basic idea was to find certain places around the city while finding out things related to the places. Smartphones were forbidden, however I don’t think anyone followed that rule The way we were supposed to find out about the places was to ask the local people to help us. We actually got quite a lot of our answers that way and it was nice for the people to help us!
Unfortunately we didn’t win the quiz, but we got pretty good scores anyway! Thanks to our team for great time!
After the quiz was over we head over to one of the student restaurants for lunch and afterwards for some coffee. Gotta love the coffee culture here, we’re constantly going for a cup of coffee here. You can check out the pictures I took that day on the link below.
Click to see pictures
We bought those shirts to gain extra points from the quiz, however the judges were cruel and only laughed at us mockingly 
We tried!
Visit to The Zagreb City Museum
Me, Dario and Tomas @coffeeshop
On Sunday 14th of October we went for another ESN Zagreb event. There were strict no pictures -policy in the museum, so I don’t have any pictures from the museum itself, but I took some before and after the event. The museum tour was okay, but it felt like the person who was giving us the tour was in a mad hurry and I missed 90% of everything she said. Most of the item descriptions were also in Croatian, so it was pretty much just looking and guessing what everything was
After the museum we went for coffee AGAIN! As you can see from the pictures, the weather is getting colder here as well. I really need to start looking into buying a jacket here. And to answer your question: no, I didn’t bring a jacket from Finland with me
Click to see pictures
Second week of school
The courses finally started properly and we are diving in to the wonderful world of economics. I have to say that the school life is quite different over here. The pace of the lectures is way faster, the teachers speak very good English and there is at least twice the amount of testing than in Finland. The courses are also divided into three main segments which are lectures, seminars and tutorials. To be honest, this confuses the heck out of me, because all of those segments have their own professors, their own schedules, own assignments etc. and there is no difference between them. So in short, they have different names, but they are all like normal lectures.
Another thing that I noticed here that they don’t seem to be very prepared for exchange students. Some of the instructions we’ve been given seem somewhat chaotic sometimes and we really need to dig into some things to find out what we need to do next. For example, all exchange students are forbidden to loan books from the library. How crazy is that?!
But overall it seems like it’s the bureaucracy here that keeps everyone so confused. The people in school are very nice and helpful, but it seems like the system is just made so damn difficult that even they can’t always help us.