Slovenia..? Scandinavia..?

People seem to have trouble remembering where in the world I am going to study! No one I have spoken to seems to know much about Slovakia, and indeed neither did I before I started researching the vet school there! With the help of Wikipedia and Google I have started to learn about the country and city where I will be living for the majority of the next four years. From what I've found it looks like a lovely place to live, which is good because I won't get a chance to visit before I move out there. 

Slovakia is a small country, even smaller than the UK, with a population size of about 5.4 million. Kosice is the second largest city after the capital Bratislava, but still only has a population of about 240,000. The country is landlocked and bordered by Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, Austria and Czech Republic (with which it used to make up Czechoslovakia. It's a part of the world I've never really visited before so I plan to use this opportunity to travel a bit more.

The landscape of Slovakia seems to be full of mountains, caves and castles. I'll leave it to the Slovakia tourism website to provide you with pictures because I obviously don't have any myself yet.

The climate looks pretty good too, with proper summers but also proper snowy winters. Maybe I can take some tips back to the UK for coping with snowy weather! I'm pretty sure the Slovaks don't drop everything at the first flake.

Regarding travel, there are currently no flights directly from the UK to Kosice. The options are flying to Bratislava and getting the train to Kosice, or flying to Budapest, Hungary and getting a taxi. The Budapest option seems to take slightly less time but it's also slightly more expensive. I have read rumours of a flight route opening up between Luton and Kosice which would be ideal, but I'm not getting my hopes up because there have been no confirmations yet.

On another note, I had my last day volunteering at the zoo today :( I will miss it but I'm going to be working more hours in the retail department of the zoo from next week and I need my days off for planning the big move to Slovakia. I will still be volunteering for Tiggywinkles as it's not such a big commitment, so I should still get my animal work fix occasionally!

Bye for now!

Lucy

UVM Kosice

I received my start dates for September yesterday, so I know when I'll be registering, starting the course etc. It's good to have a date in mind so I can start planning my flight over :)

I've been doing lots of research on the university and the city since I applied, so I'll try to summarise what I've found out in this post.

So, the University of Veterinary Medicine in Kosice! There is a bit of information about the university and the veterinary course on its website (here) but I didn't find it that helpful so had to do my own digging.
UVM Kosice runs veterinary medicine courses in both English and Slovak, with a 6-year course for school leavers and a 4-year course for graduates with an animal/science based degree, which is the course I have a place on. Completing the course gets you a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine qualification (DVM) and allows you to register with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) to practice in the UK, same as a graduate from any of the UK universities. There is a list of qualifications accepted by the RCVS here. The course has also been accredited by the European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education (EAEVE), the same as all the UK universities.

With tuition fees currently at €7,500 (£6415.91), studying there will work out a lot cheaper than in the UK (where tuition fees are now £9000 per year), especially because living costs in Slovakia are also a lot cheaper. A room in the university dormitories is €111 (£94.96) a MONTH, which you can easily pay per week in halls at a UK uni. I'm not expecting dorms to be the height of luxury but I'm hoping to stick it out for the four years to bring the costs down, as renting a flat seems to be about double the price, although still cheap by UK standards!

The course is in English, but I'm hoping to learn a bit of the Slovak language while I'm out there. I never really studied a language except French at school, and I only remember the very basics. There is a module in Slovak in the first year, but I'm also going to try to learn a few phrases before I get there; I'd like to be able to at least ask for directions! I've found this website which seems like it will be useful, it has recordings of the pronunciation as well as pages of useful phrases.

I'll leave it at that for now, but hopefully my next post will be about the city of Kosice.

So, dovidenia (goodbye)!

Lucy

It's been a long time...

...but I decided to revive my blog!

A lot has happened since I last posted (well it has been over a year!) so I don't quite know where to start.
After my RVC interview last year I was rejected at the end of March, so I applied again in October, had an interview this year in January and was rejected AGAIN in March. The RVC obviously don't want me, so I moved on to my back up plan; studying abroad.

I applied to the University of Veterinary Medicine in Košice, Slovakia, shortly after receiving my second rejection and... I have a place! So I'll be starting there this September. The main reason I'm restarting this blog is to help out anyone who is thinking of studying there. The course seems to be getting more popular but there's still not much information out there for potential applicants so hopefully I'll be able to rectify that a bit once I get started on the course.

In other news, I've been working in the retail department of a local zoo since March last year, and also volunteering on the Africa department which has been a lot of fun! Especially getting to hang out with newborns like this little guy.

The giraffes are probably my favourite. I think it's because I look a little bit like one!

That's all for now. I'll try to keep the updates regular from now on! Hopefully I'll post some pictures of the things I've been knitting over the past year in the next few days. I have vague plans to sell some of them off to raise funds for my studies but we'll see how it goes.

Bye!

Lucy