Bratislava

Hallo!

On Sunday afternoon around 1 pm we arrived to the last stop of our trip, Bratislava, Slovakia! At this point everyone was already a bit tired from the trip, so we were hoping just to spend couple of hours getting to know Bratislava. But actually for our surprise it turned out that we need to stay in Bratislava for 9 hour, since the bus drivers need to rest.....Nobody was happy about this and we all wanted to leave earlier, but apparently it is in the German law, so we had to spent the 9 hours in Bratislava.

Our day began with a sightseeing tour. The guide of the tour was really nice and she knew a lot of stuff about the history, only downside was that it was really cold there, only +8°C and really windy...(haha not really cold for Finnish people, but we are used to the German weather!) The tour lasted only about an hour and that was actually enough, since the city was quite small. And now some pictures of the city!

Danube river

St. Martin Cathedral

St. Martin Cathedral

Holocaust Memorial

Embassy of the United States 

Advertising Nokia Lumia in Bratislava :D

Bratislava Opera

The oldest hotel in Bratislava, Carlton

Our group for the sightseeing tour!

At the end of the tour the guide recommended us a good buffet restaurant in the city center, so after the tour we decided to go there! It was a nice place and the food was okay too. The buffet cost 6€ and did not include drinks.

After eating we all just spent some time there, because they had free wifi :D At some point we decided to continue our way. We wanted to go shopping, because we had already basically seen the whole city. The guide recommended us a new shopping mall just a 10 minutes walk away from the restaurant! Also during the tour she only recommended us different shopping malls, apparently there is nothing else to do in Bratislava :D We found the shopping center and spent the evening there.

The mall closed at 9 pm and our bus was scheduled to leave at 10.45, so we needed to find a warm place to pass the time...surprisingly we ended up in a McDonald's where also all the others from our bus were :D:D

The bus didn't leave on time, surprise! And there were also some troubles at the border between Slovakia and Czech Republic. We had a presentation on Monday afternoon at 4 pm, so we started to worry if we are going to make it at all since the journey was going to last about 16 hours. We got closer and closer to Köln but not nearly on time so in Bochum we decided to take train in order to arrive in Köln on time. Luckily we made it to the presentation but not thanks to the bus!

Originally we were supposed to arrive back to Köln already at 9 am. Nobody informed us that the schedule is going to change, They only told us about this on Monday morning..and they never apologized to us about the delay. This trip didn't leave that good impression of the organizers. Despite the difficulties the cities were really beautiful and we had a great time! We think this might have been our last trip :(

The next post is going to be a comparison between the two student trip organizations we have used: pm2am student trips and Studifahrten.

Bis bald!
Jenna&Maiju

Last week

Hallo!

Last week was full the normal day-to-day stuff. Going to school, hanging out with friends and of course a little party :D On Monday we had just a normal school day. Only thing special was that Jenna had to go to the post office. As an Erasmus exchange student we needed to fill out several forms about the exchange period. One of them is a Learning Agreement, where is listed all the courses we are taking here in Germany as well as the courses that are going to be credited for us in Finland. My Learning Agreement was of bad quality (bad ink quality..:D) so I needed to send the original version back to my school in Finland. After asking from few German students and Google maps, I found out that there is a post office at Zülpicher Platz. I found the office eventually..:D and there was a nice lady behind the desk who helped me in German. The cost of a letter to Finland was 4,05€ which included three post stamps and an envelope. Hopefully the letter made it to Finland! :)

Tuesday is our day-off!! So what a better way to spend it that go shopping!:)) The plan was to check out the popular shopping streets Schildergasse and Hohe Strasse after a quick visit in Primark.Well we went to Primark and after spending there something like two hours, we were too tired to go anywhere else....:D At least we did some good findings and cheap!

Jenna tried on FEW clothes....:D

So Maiju got bored.....

The outcome of a quick visit in Primark.....

After all the hard work we got hungry and decided to go to Subway to see if it's the same as Finland. Well first of all the choices of fillings were mostly the same with few exceptions: salami, BBQ rib and tuna-ham-bacon melt. We still decided to stick with the usual choice Spicy Italian. The sub itself was good, but in our opinion they baked it too long so the bread was kinda dry. The price was lower  than in Finland, about 3,50 €.

After enjoying our subs we wanted to try out one of the many beautiful cafes in Heumarkt (area near the Dom and Rhein). We found a place and ordered pieces of cheese cake and Daim cake with hot chocolate and tea. Here it is much cheaper to go to cafes than in Finland. We got those two pieces of cake, hot chocolate and tea with 10€, in Finland you need to pay 5€ just for one piece of cake.

Looks better than it actually tasted..:D

The cakes were delicious!

...I am sweet! (sugar)

In the evening we were just about to go for a run when somebody told us that there is a party at Pablo, Yvonne and Christina's place. So we made a tough decision and skipped the run......:D:D We had a lot of fun:) Nothing that special happened...except a trash can almost set to fire, let's just leave it there:D

Rares and Maiju at the party

On Wednesday we had a normal school day and finally the German course started! Luckily we are both in the same group, especially since the classes are held in the evening from 18.15-19.45. Our group is B1+, which means that we should already know some German! :DD In the same group are 5 Dutch guys, us two and three other girls. The teacher is really nice which makes learning more fun and the classes aren't boring. Even though the classes are in the evening, time goes really fast. We think we have already learnt a lot! Funny thing is that the teacher doesn't actually speak very good English, but it doesn't really matter because she can explain all the words in a simple way in German. We noticed this when she was trying to translate a word to English and couldn't. Actually it is better when she explains it in German, so we learn more.

On Thursday we needed to go to an exhibition to Koelnmesse (exhibition center). The exhibition is called Dmexco, it is a digital marketing exhibition and conference. We got an assignment from International Marketing and Applied Social Media Marketing -courses to visit Dmexco and write a short report about it. We needed to take part in a seminar and also just to look around. The Koelnmesse  was a huge place! Dmexco was held in the northern part of the Koelnmesse. We needed to take a bus from the south entrance to the northern one. Dmexco was held in three of the exhibition halls and actually there are 11 halls altogether. Basically every company from the digital marketing industry was there..:D just to mention couple of them: Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, Amazon, Spotify, Youtube, Google...Even though it was a B2B-event it was really interesting to take part in it. We heard that Dmexco is the most important event in the digital marketing industry and people all over the world take part in it. 

Before going to the Dmexco we grabbed some lunch! Yummy. Stephanie is really happy about her soup :)

Free drinks, food, candy and everything! :D

In the evening we went to the dorms, again:D There some people just hanging out and we spent a nice relaxed evening together. At some point we got tired and wanted to go home, but the last bus had already gone. So just call a cab! Sounds easy, but wasn't...At first we couldn't find the number anywhere, but after searching for an hour Maiju managed to find the number and call a taxi for us. We made it home!

Friday was a cozy home day for us. We finally made it to the run and in the evening we watched a movie and searched information about Amsterdam. We went to bed early because in the morning we left for Amsterdam :)

That was our week! At the end a nice, beautiful picture of us...
And btw this is going to be a new tradition in our posts: a nice beauty picture!

Bis bald!
Jenna&Maiju

Vogue Fashion's Night Out @ Düsseldorf

Hallo!

On Wednesday we went for a walk with Yvonne and she told us about the Fashion's Night out in Düsseldorf and invited us to join her and her friends. 

Vogue Fashion's Night Out is an event where different stores are open until midnight. It is arranged in different countries worldwide. In Germany it is held in Düsseldorf and also in Berlin. In addition for the stores being open late, they also offer free drinks and DJ's play music. 

Our train to Düsseldorf left at 18.34 from Köln Hauptbahnhof and the journey lasted only 30 minutes and it was for free!! We have our student ID cards from CBS which allows us to use all the public transportation in Köln and also in Nordrhein-Westfalen state. By the way nobody was checking the tickets at any point, so no matter if you have a ticket or not...:D

Mirror selfie :)

Even though the name of the event was Fashion's Night Out, it really wasn't about the fashion....better name would have been Free Champagne's Night Out :D:DD Everybody was there for the drinks, nobody was looking the clothes or buying anything. Except Maiju found a bag!

Not all the glasses are ours! :D

One store had really put an effort to the event. They had a real bar inside the clothing store and also the music was playing quite loud. They offered free vodka-mix-something-drinks, but you could also order anything else for a cost. We kept to the free-ones :D

Can you see the mannequin inside? She is actually a real person!

Free sparkling wine in Zara! Not in Finland!

Then a bit before midnight we headed to the Düsseldorf Hbf and took a train back to Köln. When we got back to Rudolfplatz (our home stop), there was a full party going on in the street. Lots of men partying near our house, the street was actually packed. The reason for this might be, that we have a gay bar right next to our place...Even though we were really tired, the music was so good and loud that we felt like going to dance with the men! :D Still decided not to..

Next post is about our apartment and the location!

Tschüs!

Jenna&Maiju