Studying
I think it is in the nature of Erasmus exchange that you’re constantly busy with something. The little free time I have here between school, Erasmus trips, meeting other exchange students and Erasmus parties, I pretty much spent on studying or thinking how I should study. 
Like I mentioned before, the pace of the lectures here is way faster and there is just no way you can comprehend everything during the lectures. Additional studying after class is a must, at least for me.
Homesickness
On another topic, I’ve started to feel very homesick lately. I keep having these blurry dreams about Finland, sauna, spending time at our summer cottage and all that sort of stuff that is part of the traditional Finnish culture. And the funny thing is that I don’t even do those things that much when I’m in Finland. 
I also miss my friends and family a lot of course. Thank god for modern technology, Skype, Facebook etc. so at least we can keep in touch every now and then.
I’ve had little moments of homesickness before here, but now it’s different. Once I reached the 2 month marker, the feeling really got stronger. I honestly didn’t think it would happen this soon, or at all even.
Belgrade
Ready to party hard with Niklas!
ESN Zagreb organized a kick-ass weekend trip to Belgrade, Serbia for us. Our journey started 2nd of November from the usual place: Student hall of residence Cvjetno naselje. The bus left early in the morning so me and Niklas missed our Organisation lecture, which sucks cause I actually like that course. Our first stop of the trip was in Osijek, where we had a tour around the city and we saw all the main spots. After the tour we continued to Vukovar, where we stopped for a hospital museum. it was a pretty breathtaking experience.. After seeing things like that, it makes you think about your own problems in a whole different perspective.
We finally arrived quite late to hour hostel (Hostel Big) in Belgrade, but the day was far from over. After everyone had had the chance to shower, eat and freshen up a bit, we continued the evening to the oldest pub in Belgrade, Kasina, which was founded in 1922. It was great fun and we had a whole section of the bar reserved just for us. After Kasina we went to a totally different kind of club called Mr. Stefan Braun. Stefan Braun was very interesting experience, because it was on the top floor of an apartment building and the party was just crazy. The music was loud as hell and the bar was so filled with people that dancing basically was just jumping up and down. I’m sure there can’t be anyone living in that building, or if there is, they sure as heck aren’t sleeping. I took some pics again, as usual, so you can look at the pics from day 1 in the link below.
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Posing next to some warfare
On the 2nd day we had a city tour around Belgrade, which you can imagine was filled with hung over Erasmus zombies We divided into different groups after the tour and my group consisted mostly of Polish and Czech people. During the day I learned useful phrases in Czech and Polish like “I’m hungry”, “I’m thirsty” and my personal favorite “one beer please”. We saw all the major spots in the city together and had great fun. It’s quite an amazing and interesting city, with lots to see.
The prices there are dirt cheap as well, so if you’re travelling with a strict budget, you might want to consider Serbia. For example, I had a huge meal there for just 2.5eur and it was even very meat-y in the Serbian way. I loved it. Serbia is also known to be a place where Croatian people go buy cheap alcohol and tobacco. So it’s the same sort of relationship that we Finns have with Estonia
In the evening we went to have traditional Serbian dinner, which was basically just a plate of all sorts of different types of meats. It was delicious and the restaurant was just lovely. Unfortunately I left my camera at the hostel that night, but maybe I’ll get some pictures from others later. After that we went to see the nightlife again and partied like Erasmus!
You can check out the pictures of this day in the link below:
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On the 3rd day of our trip, we left early for Novi Sad. Novi Sad is the 2nd largest city in Serbia after Belgrade, so now I’ve seen the biggest cities in the country. We had a tour again around the city and ESN Novi Sad worked as our tour guides. I think most of our group was dead tired from all the partying and probably missed at least 50% of what we were told about the city, but thank you anyway for a lovely introduction!
On my right the restaurant-mountain
We ended the tour into a restaurant on top of this mountain (unfortunately cannot remember the name of it), and I had the greatest meal there. I was recommended to order the catfish and because I was feeling a bit adventurous and I had never tried it before, I decided to go for it. It was so good.. My mouth is watering just by thinking about it again.
We arrived back in Zagreb around 1am and we got home around 2am. The best part was that we had a presentation on the very next day in the morning from Informatics. I had my clock set up to wake me an hour before school starts and I quickly did my notes for the presentation. People actually told us that it was a good presentation, believe it or not!
You can check out the pictures again from the 3rd day in the link below:
Click to see pictures
Big thanks again to ESN Zagreb for this trip. I can’t wait for the Wien-Bratislava trip next month!