I’m not going to feed you up with fibs
that I liked anything about the university or the country… I even study at Pécs
because when applying to universities we had to pay 9000 HUF (~30€) for
applying to three places (+ 2000 HUF for every next place; joke is that we were
the last year who didn’t apply for free) and I thought if I had to pay for
three then why apply for only two, I was sure I would be accepted to Károli
Gáspár University of the Reformed Church, English studies, but didn’t have
enough points for the first (Eötvös Loránd University, Scandinavian studies)
and the second place either (I was crying after Budapest and KRE until I went
back to the city in May) so I ended up in Pécs and started my English studies
there. Choosing an Erasmus-destination was a similar torture, I’m not kidding.
The university of Ostrava was chosen
by excluding those elements from the list I was given where I couldn’t go
(because I didn’t speak the language required, such as France, Spain or
Germany) and where I didn’t want to go (I had only like two criteria: I didn’t
want to go to a city where a big group of Hungarian minority lived [e.g.
Osijek, Croatia; Timișoara, Romania] and I also wanted to go North from Hungary
[no Turkey, just nope, it’s too hot there]) and soon only two countries were
left: the Czech Republic and Poland. With Łódź and Wrocław we had connection
with the faculty of English Linguistics but with Ostrava and Katowice there was
my chosen study track, English Literature and Culture so I applied for both
places. First I didn’t know what order I should choose for them but a Czech twitter-friend
of mine helped me saying prices were almost the same in the two countries so as
I got a little more in the Czech Rep. I decided I wanted that one a little
better. It was totally unimportant for me which one to choose, I didn’t spend
hours on Wikipedia reading about the history of the cities or the ranking of
the universities. Sad but true.
I even tried to get in touch with
other universities the Faculty of Humanities had connection with (mostly
Scandinavian and Finnish ones) but all of them were dead ends I, as a simple
student, couldn’t do anything but quietly cry in the corner, mourning my love,
the never-ending emerald taiga.
But finally, I could luckily get all
papers in time (let’s say) and I was nominated by my faculty to go to Ostrava,
so I’m looking forward to get there and get some knowledge from people living
in the country of Dvořák, Smetana, and, most importantly, the best beers in the
world.
