Welcome in the second week of September! It finally looks like autumn, temperature is low, sometimes rainy and makes me miss summer already. But anyway I don't have much time for sad thoughts and fall's depression, because ZNI has started new project - R.E.S.E.T. High-school pupils from Rome,Italy are here in Maribor to spend their 12 days internship, organizing various sport events. Besides much fun, as it may seem, of course there is a lot of organizing behind the organizing :) Sounds complicated, I know, I always had problems with tautology while writing articles. 
So yesterday ZNI's coordinators and my co-workers Goran and Jerneja met new fresh blood :) and from today on we have intensive programme for them, including some trainings, introduction with presentations, some entertainment such as city tour etc. 
What comes to my travel check-list, I have managed to visit two more bright spots of Slovenia - Postojna Cave and Predjama Castle. First are huuuge and impressive karst caves, which are the most visited caves in Europe. There is even a railway inside! I have cought a cold there, because the temperature underground was like 10 degrees Celcium only and my sweater didn't seem warm enough, but I realised that only after I got out of the cave - I basically couldn't pay attention to anything else but the creepy beauty of the nature! The second place was the castle nearby caves called Predjama, which in direct translation is ''in front of cave'' - it is located in real cave and if you go inside - it's way more bigger than you can ever imagine! Fans of Jackie Chan's movies (as I actually am) will enjoy this place even more - one of his early movies ''Armour of God'' was filmed there! So I followed the steps of this great actor and imagined myself as a movie hero :) 
I am leaving now back to my other duties and have to say goodbye till the next week! Have a great autumn, everyone! 

Zdravo! My 4-th week in Maribor has just started and first thing, what I do after coming to the office – opening my blog and writing new story. I hope it will still be interesting and useful for anyone reading it. The weather cooled down, so it was not the deadly hot anymore. Some rain changed the atmosphere around, but I can’t say whether it was worse, because it’s still august and I am still on Erasmus. Conclusion: no matter what is going on outside I am enjoying every single second of it! 

Work went pretty fast, maybe it is because I am always so excited about my plans for weekend, that I can hardly notice how time flies. I had many tasks to accomplish, some connected to paper work, some to Internet (like maintaining FB page, website, sending emails and so on) and some to students (I was collecting little stories about their work placements, helping with some issues concerning mobility and their stay here). In general, it was productive week and I am completely satisfied with it. 

One important thing I have realized last week, that it is super cool to be a student in Slovenia. And it is all because of food. As Erasmus students, all participants have received coupons for food, which has allowed us to eat in almost every restaurant in the city for half-price! There are even some places, where we are able to take a sandwich for free!! Can you imagine? Free sandwiches? I was kind of sceptic, what kind of meal can we get for such ridiculous price or free of charge, but after I tried it, I was positively surprised – food is amazing, seriously, you can even separate it for lunch and dinner and you will be anyway full (I have already been to Pizzeria and Chinese restaurant). Best news since I am here in Maribor ☺  

As I told before, I was very excited about my weekend – trip to Graz (Austria) -very nice old city with tiny streets and gorgeous architecture. 3 Palaces, many full of people squares – it looked so alive for me! I was impressed by how this expensive country can be cheap for tourists – almost all places worth to visit were for free or for really low price! Lunch of course costs more than in Maribor, but McDonalds is affordable to anyone – and actually for 1 day trip – you don’t really have time to eat, because everything is so interesting and you just spend all day walking! My grade – 5/5 – must visit place!

It is time to say bye-bye for this week! I will be back soon! #LoveEatTravel

Hi there! One more week has disappeared so fast, that I am starting to dream about time-machine, which can bring me back to past, so I can live it once again. So many interesting things happen, that I have to start writing them down in order not to forget anything. Hold on, I am actually writing it here in blog!! ZNI is working on full speed right now, everybody is back from holidays and we have some stuff to do. We expect many students from Italy to come this September, so we have already started to organize their mobilities in Maribor. Job becomes challenging sometimes to me, but in the same time very interesting. I am trying to perform best as I can and get involved in everything what is going on around in the office. 

After work, I and my roommate are trying to keep us busy, because if we lie for 5 minutes in the bed, we are not able to get up anymore ☺ This week we have visited a dancing event on the main square of Maribor – that was like a weekly promotion of local dancing school. I haven’t expected to see so many people interested and dancing just for fun some salsa and samba and of course both of us joined. Despite we didn’t know any moves, we just tried to repeat and do the same steps as others and there was lots of fun! 

According to our plan, every weekend must be connected to some new place or experience – this one was about Pohorje – mountain in Maribor. Together with ZNI team, we went up on the hill with cable car, hiked a bit to the sightseeing spot, made some great pictures and went down using sledgers – in Slovenian language it sounds like “Adrenalinsko sankališče PohorJET”. That was an amazing experience! Going down from hill on those little cars with such an amazing view on Maribor was perfect ending of a trip. First, when I just took off, I thought that with such curves and speed I am going to end up in Drava River, but reality was not that horrifying! I could control the speed, so in the beginning I was using brakes almost all the time, but after while I realized that going faster brings way                                                                                                      more fun! So next time, when I go there, I will not touch brakes at all! 

And now back to work, I still have some tasks to do, so can’t stay here longer and write more (but I would love to, because my experience can hardly fit into one page☺). Stay tuned and love sLOVEnia ☺ ! 

Dober dan! I am back after one week of absence in this blog and have some nice memories to share with you.  So week has gone like one day, I just started work on Monday and boom – it was Friday already! In ZNI I have been doing lots of different things and I didn't get bored. I had to maintain website and facebok profile, help with marketing and promotion, did some administration job, as well as communicating with participants and looking for potential partners in Poland (finally my knowledge of Polish became somehow useful in this life ☺ ).  I have learned about the details of mobilities and proved myself one more time that Erasmus is really best what can happen to a student. 

For weekend, Saturday only actually, me and my roommate went to Lake Bled – an amazing natural heaven in Slovenian Alps. After hours of photoshooting at all possible spots we could find, we went swimming – and what can I say – Oh My God! I have never been swimming under castle – I can't even say why I was so happy, because of incredibly warm and clean water or because of view around the lake! Yeah, you have to spend some cash there on the other hand, because entrance to castle, later to the island and swimming area  are kind of not cheap at all, but believe me, it worth it! We also wanted to go to the other lake Bohinj, which suppose to be less touristic and more beautiful (as Slovenians claim and I am sure they are right), but we basically did not have time for it – who could have known that we will be so occupied with only one lake Bled? In the evening there was a thunderstorm, which ruined a bit our plans of chilling under castle, but anyway we were swimming even with rain and lightnings around – nothing could change our great impression! 

On our way back we didn't manage to organise a car on prevoz.org  (Slovenian version of blablacar) so we have experienced all kinds of public transportation available – bus from Bled to Ljubljana (was late, full but comparably fast) and after regional train from Ljubljana to Maribor ( was on time, empty but veeeeery slow). So in the end, we have fallen to our beds at 2 a.m. and were sleeping almost all day after. Travelling is wonderful and in the same time very exhausting – my dad told me that I was tired of pictures, walking and swimming like I would work in a coal mine ( sarcastic answer on my tired voice on the phone :)  ). 

So now I am back at work, in ZNI office and already thinking about my next week – what interesting can I do this time and where can I go ? # LoveErasmus :)

Hello everyone, who reads this blog. My name is Anastasiia Bulavka. I am an intern in ZNI since this Monday and I want to start sharing my experiences and impressions on entire environment, that surrounds me, on this webpage. So during 2 months of my internship I will be posting all those incredible things that I am sure will happen to me in Slovenia. Hope you will be interested aaaand  here we go !!! 

So first of all, a few lines about myself. I am 3-rd year student of Economics in University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow, Poland. My homeland is Ukraine, so studies in Poland were from the beginning an international experience to me. But it was not enough.  When person gets more, he or she immediately wants more. That happened to me. When I have seen how amazing is new life abroad, I have decided not to stop on Poland, but go further and further, so I have taken part in several  different mobilities for Studies and Work and visited Germany and USA.  In the 3-rd year of studies I found out, that I am still able to utilize 2 more months under  Erasmus + Mobility Programme and go somewhere for internship.  So hard question has appeared – where should I go? For studies I didn't have much choice, because I was able to go only to partner universities, but this time everything was different – entire Europe opened it's doors to me and I had to pick up one place, where to spend last 2 months of student life . As long as I have already visited many places during previous mobilities (mainly Nothern and Central Europe), I wanted to go to some brend new country, where I have never been before (and I wanted to get warm, because German's rains drove me crazy ). And then I have found ZNI – perfect internship for person, who admires  mobilities and intercultural comunication as I do. So I browsed the location, city of Maribor (sorry, my school geography teacher, but I haven't heard about this city before:) ) and it happend to be exactly what I was looking for! In the same day I have applied and after an interview I've been accepted. 

In this way from one mobility in Germany I travelled directly to another mobility in Slovenia. My bus arrived at 4 a.m. and first impression that I've got – super clean bus station. As I have been to many bus stations around the world, I can conclude, that many things may be said about the city after visiting it's bus station. I was met by a team memeber of ZNI, with whom I actually work now and I was successfuly escorted to the huge apartment, that they rent for students. Next morning, when I woke up I finally could see with clear eyes how Maribor looks like. And what can I say – it's a warm-welcoming small city, full of sunny red roofs, green streets and positive people around. All important places can be reached by foot in short time, so I took my roommate with me and we went to explore the city. 

Now it's my 4-th day in Maribor and I cant calm down and stop making pictures of remarkable places and views of mountains around Maribor.  Every day I find something new and exciting about it. Together with my roommate Adina, we have created a plan of travel for 2 months with places we must see in this country and what we've noticed - that there are so many things to do and where to go in Slovenia, that we basically don't have enough time of mobility to fulfill them! But I will do my best and write back, whenever I see or experience something  worth to tell (which will happen this weekend, I guarantee that :) ).