How did Dubrovnik steal the heart of this German Erasmus student

Janina Orlić is a 22-year old student from Germany. She was an Erasmus student in Dubrovnik studying at the Libertas University from March until June 2021. Janina came to Dubrovnik with a few friends from her home university and they lived in shared flat together. They joined an Erasmus programme during one of the most uncertain time for travelling, during the worldwide pandemic. But they don't regret it. Janina decided to share her perspective of Dubrovnik with us, keep on reading.

1. What is your name and where are you from?

My name is Janina and I'm from Germany, I'm studying in Regensburg.

2. How did you decide to go on Erasmus and why did you choose Dubrovnik?

It wasn’t easy to decide to go to Erasmus because our major required going for two semesters, a one-semester internship, and one semester on the studies. Due to the Coronavirus, it was the best option to go to a European country. And I also choose Dubrovnik because university here is a part of our university, basically the only one in Croatia. My dad is Croatian so I wanted to go to Croatia and live here for a longer time.

3. What did you expect from Erasmus and what really happened?

I didn't expect that much from Erasmus, I had really low expectations, to be honest. I was happy and I was looking forward to it, but I didn't think that we will have real Erasmus life here, and I was wrong. We had lots of activities and things that we could do together, and it was a pretty big group of people and it was fun. What I kind of expected was that I would be hanging out with people from here, which I also did, and it was great. It was an amazing experience and with much more things to do than I was expecting.

4. What do you think about your Libertas university here in Dubrovnik? Did you like it?

I liked Libertas University and we didn't have a lot of subjects and it was cool. I was very sad because everything had to be online the same like in Germany. I wanted to go through the university and study in the building and everything. I wanted to meet the professors live because I liked everyone. And I also liked the subjects because they're mostly on the political side, unlike those at my university, and I find them very interesting.

5. What is your opinion about our culture and local people?

I liked Croatian culture and we met a lot of wonderful people here. They're all very nice, and I'm glad to be here. I've been in contact with Croatian culture before because of my grandmother and that side of my family and my dad! I'm sorry that I didn't get even more from Croatian culture, and that time went really fast there!

6. Have you experienced something you will remember forever?

I've experienced a lot of nice things here that I'll remember forever. It is hard to single out something because everything was amazing and fun, even some parties were very cool, kind of legendary. I did a road trip with my two roommates and friends to Makarska on one day which was pretty amazing and another trip to Istria with other friends. We did lots of great things. Also, I think that I will remember that I cracked my foot while I was trying to escape from a party.

7. What are diffrences between education in your country and in Croatia?

Here we had to do a little more presentations and in Germany usually we don't have a lot of tasks we have to do during the semester, but we get a very big like exam phase at the end of the semester. There you have to study for weeks and in couple of weeks you have all different exams. Here we had a lot of presentations and seminars that we had to do throughout the semester. Every other week we had something that we had to present, and we also had midterms and exams which is also different. In Germany, we only have one exam. This way here makes it a little bit easier because you don't have to learn everything for each exam at the same time. You can learn small bits for several exams and in that way you can learn and remember more for later.

8. What advice would you give to future Erasmus students?

The advice that I would give to future Erasmus students would be to just enjoy the time that you have and don't be afraid of talking to people that are from different countries, different cultures, languages, it is always a nice and great way to meet amazing new people. Also, enjoy the time that you have with your Erasmus buddy and Erasmus family. Try to dag into the culture of the country that you are spending your time in and you are living in. Try to learn another language because I think that is always a great way to connect with the culture of it. I know that is not always easy, not even for me. I practiced my Croatian for a little bit because I knew some basics.

Written by: Darija Vratonjić