First snowy day in Ljubljana

26th of November, one more Friday going to Business Environment class after sleeping 4 hours bcoz of partying the night before in Compañeros as usual.

This Friday would have been like any other day, but no!! It wasn't already because by mistake I set up the alarm one hour 2 hours before class believing the class started at 9 am... so I arrived one hour early to the uni... so lame really. Beside  that it was quite usual.

Way after we started doing our Smoothie project, it started to snow for the first time in Ljubjana, there was such much snow that I was able to start a snow ball figth after class, so imagine the quantity that fell... 

First moments of snow

The Smoothie project

I was very excited during the very first moments  enjoying the snowy day, but it's already annoying a little, so much snow!!but anyway, I have to change my mind if I want to survive here in Slovenia with 3 more months of heavy snowed city... 

Judge yourself by the picture, this is only the first day, how is it going to be in the coldest days...?


Update: it's snowing again....
Update2: this is our final Smoothie project http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERZOQKxYIxA

Erasmus Road Trip: destination Austria

Hello fellas!!

It's been a long week since I last updated the blog, but today I feel inspire, lets be honest, and a little bit bored too.. lol

Well I went on this trip couple of weeks ago, exactly from the 29th of October til the 1st of November.

We visited first Graz, very nice city btw. judge urself. Small and cozy, we didn't spend much time in the city, but we did enjoy it, having snichtel for lunch (is that correct Elvisss?), and walkind around the city. really lovely, and sunny weather did help a lot!!
We also walked up to the Schloßberg, where we saw the Clock Tower and Platz der Ehrenamtlichen (so difficult to write!!), among other stuff. 

After half day in Graz we went on our way to Vienna, (so sad I couldn't see Elvis, nor Juan or Maria).
We stayed in Vienna for 3 days, very nice city, people (I lost my iPhone in the hostel hall but an angel handed it to the reception) and the food, yammy, Vienesse style steak, and the Hotel Sacher's chocolate cake!!


 During these day we walked quite a lot, visiting palaces, museums and enjoying the Vienese way of living! Like riding the metro (I missed u so much.. but I like Madrid's better) and having a nice cup of cofsee, Starbucks coffee, saving the differences, but I enjoyed more the Stur's coffee coz there are no Starbucks in Ljubljana... so lame! 

After having so much fun in the capital of Austria, we took the way back home to LJU through Venice coz we had to drop Rosi's relatives over there, and later on we drove from Venice to LJU.


What a nice weekend I had I must say.

Erasmus Road Trip: destination Zagreb

On the 9th of October, we went to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia.

Again the optiion for travelling was renitng a car, me, Marga, Emilie and Lucile met at 8:00am in Kino Siska to go to take the car we previously booked. So by 9am we started our way to Zagreb! 

It took around 2 hours to arrive and park.. nothing spcecial to recall from the way in, I was sleeping as usual.. lol

WELCOME TO ZAGREB!!

Well the first impression of Zagreb is that is much more bigger than Ljubljana, and I really liked that, coz Ljubljana is quite small. I didn't notice anything special, I mean, the coty is really nice and beautiful, but I already expected that, so I didn't get any surpirses.

You can tell from the picture that is very European, the pic on your left was taken rigth in front of the Crkva sv. Marka aka St. Mark's Church. Pretty isn't it?


The best thing of the trip was obviously the company, it couldn't be any funnier !!

On the way back, nothing special happened, well, on the border to get out Croatia, we stopped like 30 minutes in the customes, I think they were checking my ID meticulously, normal, the were wondering why in the world would a Macanese guy, who was born in Macau, by that time a Portuguese colony, and now is showing a Spanish ID.. I would have doubted too if it was fake or not.. lol

Anyway, we got back to Ljubljana during the evening without incidents, we return the car, and we took a burek, in my case, a mesni burek (meat burek) for dinner.

Afterwards, I went to Anja's bithday party to finish the day.

Trip to Bled, the Waterfalls, and the Unkown Village

25th of September, rainy, very rainy.
We gathered in the parking slot across the Union brewery because the SOU organized a trip for the Erasmus to Bled and Bohinj.

As I said in the previous entry, Bohinj is amazing, but on this day we saw the waterfall in its own capacity, since it was raining like hell, the water flow was really fierce.

Later on we went to Bled, I was kinda bored at the beginning of the trip bcoz I din't knew anybody on the forehand, but I started to talk to this french girl Marga, and imagine how nice she is that  is one of my closest friends
Bled beautiful as usual, this pic was actually taken when I went with Marko, Eva and company just after the SiMUN finished. Fantastic place where you can enjoy the lake and the views ftom the castle and taste the Kremma Rezina.

"Que me enrollo como las persianas"I roll up like blinds..

After we went to some close village to enjoy a "medieval" dinner, I quoted medieval coz the only medieval thing was the costume of the waiter.. awful food, but an experience on its own.

Erasmus Road Trip : travelling around Slovenia II

Here I continue with the adentures across Slovenia,
not forgetting to mention that I drove half the way from Celjie to Ljubljana and it was an experience not to enjoy again...

The next day, we took the car, but this time we met a little bit later, and we started the trip to Piran, what can I say about it, you can already see the beauty of the city just looking at the picture next to you.
Piran is in the South-West of Slovenia, near Italy and bordered by the Adriatic Sea, just 2 word, A Mazing.. lol

We almost spend the whole day over there, walk around the city, resitng near to the sea, and walking trough the lovely castle, where I took this pic

As some of you may have noticed, it;s the second time I go there, the first time was with Miha, Dani and Marte.

By the time sunset time, we decided to go back to Ljubljana, spending the whole day walking around and doing tourism is pretty exhausting.. .. what a tough Erasmus life.. !

On Sunday we went to Bohinj, watching the beautiful waterfalls and amazing lake, with crystalin water.

This is not either the first time, because I went there already with an Erasmus organized trip where I met Super Marga, I will talk about this trip later on.






Well this is all about the first big road trip around Slovenia, I hope you've enjoyed watching the entries, but specially the pcitures because I know my writting is like a pain in the ass..

Erasmus Road Trip : travelling around Slovenia I

Hello folks!

Today I am going to talk about the very first big trip during my Erasmus stay.
Alfonso, Edu, Javi, Rosi and I rented a car on Friday 1st of October for 3 days. At the first time I was a little bit worried about if I was going to have fun or not, since I didn't know them that well, but what can I say, now they are my closest Spanish friends here in Ljubljana, and I am really glad I've met them.

Anyway, as I've just said, we met at 8am or smthg like that in the dorm 1 to go all together to the bus station to rent the car.
After dealing with the documents and stuff, we got our car and we started heading to Muska Sobota.



The town has a lovely castle, if we can call it that, no offenses, but we expected a stone-like castle, but it was like a regular not stoned made castle..but it was nice though. It also has a nice church and a WWII conmemorative statue


Murska Sobota is pretty small, so after a smal walk, we took the car to our next stop, and this is Ptuj.


Ptuj is the oldest city is Slovenia, with lots of stoned roads from the Roman times, beautiful houses and a real castle!!
Even tough the rown is very small, it is wonderful !

The next and last stop for the day was Celje, the third largest town in Slovenia, we arrived there around 6pm, and it was already getting dark, so we weren't able to check out the city much, but I realized that it had a lot of hair dressers.. strange haa?

Why choose Ljubljana for Erasmus?

Many of you have wondered and asked me thousand of times why I chose such an unusual place like Ljubljana for Erasmus, and the answer is as simple as it is.
My home university, Carlos III de Madrid, offers a wide range of exchange destination within Europe, and many of them are in hot places like Holland, France, UK, and so on. So.. why Slovenia? Slovenia is located in the Southern part of Central Europe (or Western Balkans some might say), with a capital of about 200.000 people. That is why I chose Ljubljana, a small but cozy city. I wanted to experience how does it feel to live in a small place, where you can mostly walk from place to place or even to take bike.

Another reason is merely personal, I didn't want to go to a place where already tons of students or tourist have been there already, because from Madrid we have plenty of flights to big European capitals, and for very low prices, so I can go anytime for a weekend, but Ljubljana, even if it;s not far, like 2 hours by plane from Madrid, not many people have been here, mainly beacuse is not that well conected by plane.

Now you know the reasons of my Erasmus elections, if the university would have offerd me going to Georgia, Belarus or places like that, take for granted that I would have chosen those destination instead, but well, maybe for future exchange agreements.

In the following lines, for the the future Erasmus students who might consider Ljubljana as their destination, I will explain shortly what are the bureaucracy to deal with when you get here.



Step 1-Check in for the dormitory, in Rozna Dolina, and then choose the dorm that fits u best. (I am staying in Rozna Dolina, close to the city centre, 15 minutes walk)
Step 2- Get your Student Card at the International Office (Kongresni Trg. 12)
Step 3- Have your Certificate of Attendance signed in the same office, one per term, and sent it back to ur home college
Step 4- Go to the SOU, the Students Organization in Kersnikova 4 to do the student discount coupons, they will tell what do u have to do, like buying a Slovenian phone number, register via internet, etc...)
Step 5- Activate your phone for the coupons, et vouila! cheap meals for all the stay, at least 21 or 22 per month
Step 6- Get your resident permit, 2 passport sized photos are required, it's quite expensive to do it here in Ljubljana so bring a bunch of them from ur home.
Step 7- Start enjoying your Erasmus!

Hope the info above is helpful, if any of you have any other questions feel free to aks me ! 

The Orientation Week

28th of September, after enjoying the very last days of holidays partying quite a lot and an Erasmus trip to Bled It was about time to settle down and go back to the routine, but with a slow path, this is what the Orentation Week really means, first contact with the academic world during the Erasmus. Can't say much about it, pretty boring, presentartion of the academic schedule, process, professors and courses.

We were given a folder with our names and stuff, including time tables and everything to get ready for the new academic season
During the following days we made a tour around the faculty, or Ekonomska Faculteta, to see where the library, computer lab, book shop etc were.



But it's not all bad, specially because I met some of the best people in town, yes, Alfonso, Marga, Lucile, among others, (Rosi don't get jelous coz I met u way before..!!) . I am so glad I have met u , you are making my life and the classes better and funnier!!

I can say that my smthg new of that weekend would be all the fantastic people I got the chance to get to know.