Adeus Lisboa

A blog entry on the end of exchange has been long overdue, but since I got back to Finland less than two weeks ago this post still feels relevant. After a busy last week and sad goodbyes with our great group of exchange friends in Lisbon, I flew to Finland for one week around Christmas before continuing the journey to my parents in Arizona. Now that I'm back to reality, it is nice to recollect about the past autumn.

My favorite viewpoint in Lisbon - Largo das Portas do Sol

Overall the exchange semester in Lisbon was fantastic. I met so many new people who  are now good friends, enjoyed many sides of Lisbon, travelled several times and also had some pretty good learning experiences at Nova University of Lisbon. Lisboetas were also treated with a remarkably long and sunny autumn so we hung out at beaches until early November. Even when it suddenly got rather cold in mid November, the sun kept on shining.

Lisbon is a great city for exchange students. The city is small enough to get around easily but big enough for it not to get boring. Housing and living expenses are rather low, especially when comparing with Finland.  There are a lot of options for eating out, having drinks or going clubbing as there is something going on around the city every day. In daytime there are also various cafes and terraces to enjoy the sun. The weather overall is a great plus - temperature wise summer lasts forever and winters seem to be like Finnish autumns.

Culturally it was a good experience to live in a South European culture - partly frustrating, partly refreshing. It took some time to for example get used to long waits everywhere and people being late for everything. This was also discussed in our HR class, in which Nordic people described Portuguese as ineffective, where as the Portuguese described Nordics as rather uptight, stressed and controlling. Cultural differences and cultural prejudice goes both ways.  But living in Lisbon definitely taught me to change my attitude at least a little bit and not mind so much if things do not happen at the immediate second I would expect them to.

Nova University of Lisbon has a good level of teaching and a decent selection of courses to choose from. Naturally there are some differences in teaching methods and evaluation that I was not always a fan of, but overall I definitely learned a lot of new, valuable and practical things in many of the courses. The workloads for courses were not massive, but did require concentration and some work to be done. And as for passing, in the courses that I took it was easy to pass when I attended classes and did the required work. From what I heard though, some finance and economics classes were extremely demanding and there was sometimes not even a clear explanation as to why some people failed and others passed.

Nova SBE campus

All in all, the time in Lisbon was really amazing and I can truly recommend it as a place for exchange.  Right now I am really missing all the fun times, pretty buildings, beautiful  viewpoints, fresh seafood & vinho verde, sunny beaches and many other things that make Lisbon so special. Hopefully I get to go back soon! 

Second half courses

All exchange courses are now over and somehow time seemed to pass by much faster in the second half of the semester compared to the first half. Earlier I completed four courses worth 3,5 ECTS each, and in the second half I did three courses. The workload and time spent with each of the courses in the latter part of the semester felt much greater, although it did not matter much because I personally was more interested in most of the topics in the second half anyway. 

Corporate Social Responsibility - professor Joana Story

This course focused on the strategic side of CSR which was interesting as I have taken a CSR communication course before. CSR is a pretty debated topic and in this course it is covered from many different perspectives. Professor Story seems extremely passionate about CSR and gives entertaining, engaging lectures but she also expects class attendance and wants students to participate. The workload in this course is very doable although it did include quite an extensive quantitative research paper to do in a group. Structurally it is not a big work, but because it requires working with SPSS which none of our group members had done before it took some effort to complete. Apart from the group paper, the grade is made up of participation that includes in-class assignments, as well as an exam which is based much on class knowledge and class slides so if you have concentrated in class it is not difficult. Overall a quite entertaining and interesting course that I can recommend.

Customer Relationship Management - professor Elizabete Cardoso

This course was one of the most interesting ones to me before hand and it turned out to be a very useful, hands-on course which focused on how to manage CRM initiatives. As a case company we worked with Benfica, Lisbon's football team, to analyze their CRM activities and develop new initiatives. This was somewhat difficult at times as most of the information which is available on Benfica is in Portuguese. This course does not have mandatory lecture attendance, but surprisingly while lectures were scheduled for Wednesdays and Thursdays, we also had group presentations on three different Fridays. This required some rescheduling as exchange students tend to travel on weekends, but the professor was flexible and understanding with times. The grade consisted of three presentations, a final paper and a final exam. Preparing three different presentations took quite much time, but the final paper just included the presentations in a package and the final exam was based on both the group presentations and class slides so it was not too difficult. Overall a somewhat time consuming course, but an interesting topic, good professor and it provides valuable understanding for CRM so I would say it is worth it.

Global Human Resources Management - professor Rita Cunha

The GHRM course covered a lot of topic areas that I was familiar with from earlier studies in international business (Hofstede, expatriates, issues with female leaders etc.) which also made it harder to concentrate and keep an interest on the new things that were taught. Class attendance was not mandatory but there were several separate assignments to complete for the course - a personal essay, a group case study, two executive summaries in a group, a group term paper and presentation, as well as the final exam. Overall these assignments were not too demanding although organizing so many different group assignments took some time. The exam was based on a case which was a nice change and skimming slides was quite enough to study for it. Overall I did not get too much out of this course, partly because of my own interest level and quite low class attendance, however it was not too demanding and definitely an exchange student -friendly course.

A nice thing at Nova is that grades are supposed to be provided to students within a week of taking the final exam. So the final grades are now also in and it seems that as I passed everything, meaning that I am also done with all courses in the Master's degree. The only thing left to do after exchange is the thesis, although I wouldn't mind spending another sunny semester in Lisbon!

Long weekend in Barcelona

December started out nicely when my boyfriend and I decided to meet half way Portugal and Italy to spend a long weekend in Barcelona. We spent the days wandering around enjoying the busy streets, Gaudi's creations and huge shopping areas all around. I wonder what Barcelona is like in summer time since even at this time of year, La Rambla was filled with people from morning to night.

I had wanted to go to Barcelona for a long time, and since it is a short distance and cheap destination from Lisbon it was a good time to go - my tickets with Vueling cost only 70€. Portugal is a bit like Finland in the sense that it is located on the further edge of Europe, meaning that there are not many close-by options to easily travel to. However from a traveler's point of view, having Spain as the only neighboring country to go to is really not a bad option, even in winter time.

A friend of ours had spent an exchange semester in Barcelona three years back and gave us a list of things to see and do - a big thank you to her for the tips! We followed her suggestions quite closely and spent the day time by enjoying the city center, Sagrada Famiglia, Park Güell and other Gaudi's places we could find. Another friend of ours happened to be in town as well so we met up for burgers over lunch, and as the food wasn't so traditionally Spanish we enjoyed some cava on the side to toast our reunion. For the other dinners we had during the weekend we focused on local specialties, indulging on tapas and paella, although surprisingly no sangria.

One of the nicest things we saw Barcelona was the Magic Fountain of Montjuïc, located under the magestic Palau Nacional. Despite the cold weather we sat on the stairs and watched the colorful fountain "dance" to music, ranging from the newest pop to old school hits and classical music. It might sound a bit cheesy but is really worth enjoying. During night time there were many other places to enjoy around Barcelona as well, especially since Christmas was showing all across the city with Christmas markets, bright lights and decorations filling up the streets.

Compared to Lisbon, Barcelona has much more of a "big city" feel to it and I'm sure there are so many other things we could and should have seen. The city definitely calls for a revisit - next time hopefully during warm summer weathers.

Road trip to Porto

The fall has been running by quickly, and suddenly there are only three weeks of exchange in Lisbon left. Therefore the weekend road trip we did with a group of exchange friends to Porto will probably also be our last trip together for now. Luckily though the trip was quite amazing and we had a great time seeing new beautiful places in Portugal.

Beautiful Porto

As we were a group of 15 people, we rented out three cars and decided to meet up in Porto with each car making their own stops on the way. Some went to Coimbra and Aveiro, others stopped in Fátima, and our road trip team decided to stop in Nazaré which is home to the world's biggest wave. At this time of year, the cute looking town was quite deserted but I can imagine that the long beach is packed in summer time. We did not see any majorly big waves (although in my opinion, the regular sized waves looked big enough to keep me out of the water) but it was fun to see some surfers heading into the water at sunset time. 

Nazaré

Can you spot the three surfers?

After Nazaré, we headed towards Porto and the hotel in which our whole group was staying. On previous trips, the whole group has stayed in a big house but this time it was nice to be in a walking distance from the city center. Porto is somewhat similar to Lisbon with its hills, architecture and trams, yet it feels a little less hectic and busy although this may also be due to the fact that it is November and off-season for tourists. Porto itself is truly beautiful - I really liked Porto's riverside with old buildings, cafes, boats and several bridges, especially since we were treated with perfect November weather that we were able to enjoy outside on terraces. 

For the most part, we enjoyed and got to know the city by just walking around, seeing different sights and having a coffee or glass of port here and there. As it is interesting to always try local food specialties in new places, some of us decided to have the traditional Porto dish Francesinha. And interesting it was - the dish consisted of two toast breads filled with ham, beef and sausage, covered with a massive amount of cheese and dipped in a spicy sauce/soup. For the sophisticated part of our trip, we attended an actual wine tasting tour at the Vasconcellos winery where we learned how to identify quality port from supermarket port (this local delicacy was much more to my liking). We also tried out the local night life in the Baixa area, enjoying some really fun bars that played legendary music from the 70's all the way to our childhood favorites from the 90's. 

Francesinha

Given that we only had the weekend to explore Porto, we skipped several activities that could be nice to try. If I get to go back sometime, I will definitely take a boat ride on the Douro river and perhaps also visit a winery in the area where grapes for Port wine are grown. 

Other sides of Lisbon

A week ago I had some long awaited guests here in Lisbon when my sister and aunt came to visit. Although the temperature seemed to drop heavily during the few days they were here, we got to enjoy sunny Lisbon in many ways. It was nice to act as a tour guide again, but it also served as a great opportunity to visit places and attractions that I have been meaning to see all autumn. 

In the city center I showed my sister and aunt some basic places like the castle and Praça do Comércio. We also tried some new things like riding up the Santa Justa Lift (looks cool in the city but a total tourist rip-off I would say, 5€ to ride up even though you could just take another rout and walk onto it for free...)  and taking tram number 28 across the city. The tram ride feels like an old roller coaster - it goes up and down Lisbon's steep hills and especially the downhill parts are filled with a mix of excitement and anxiety because you wonder if the breaks will make it. The earlier you jump into the tram the better because once tram 28 reaches the city center, it will be packed. 

For one of our day trips outside of the city center, we hopped on a boat and crossed the Tejo river to visit Cristo Rei, the Jesus statue. We took a boat from Cais do Sodré and then bus 101 which gave a nice little tour of the Almada municipality on the way. Cristo Rei may mildly remind you of Rio de Janeiro's Cristo Redentor, yet the massive cement structure of Cristo Rei makes it look and feel quite different. Cristo Rei is located next to Ponte 25 de Abril, the bridge that reminds you of another city, San Francisco. The Cristo Rei monument itself is somewhat pretentious but the view over Lisbon, the bridge and the entire coast line is pretty amazing. Both the monument and bridge were built during times of dictatorship in Portugal which makes them historically interesting places to visit as well. 

One might also think that I have totally fallen for football since one of that weekend's highlights was the World Championships qualification game Portugal vs. Sweden. Everything about the game was like something I haven't seen before - crazy fans, the jammed metro, the riot police, the size of the stadium, and the excitement of the game. It ended 1-0 for Portugal, and although I have to admit that I cheered for Sweden that night (and football is perhaps the only sport in which it can be considered ok for a Finn to be on Sweden's side) it was great to see the local team win. Now that the teams have played the second game, I'm happy that Portugal went through as they also won the second game by 3-2. 

Portugal vs. Sweden and Ronaldo vs. Zlatan.

Portugal scores!

This Portuguese fan really wanted me to take a photo of him after Portugal's goal.

On the last day, we took the train to lovely Cascais to have an easy day of enjoying the sun and sea breeze. When we got back to Lisbon in the evening, it was time for another highlight as we went to listen to Fado. It is traditional Portuguese music that is sung in restaurants. I had wanted to experience Fado for a long time, and although I did not understand a word of the songs it was just as beautiful, dramatic and melancholic as I had imagined. We decided to try out Clube de Fado which was quite pricy but had both good food and Fado, but there are many other places all around Lisbon to listen to Fado all as well. It might be a good idea to book a table in advance in any place though because even now during "off season" the restaurant was completely full.

Pretty little Cascais

 

Overall we did so much during those four days that we were completely exhausted every night. Hopefully my sister and aunt enjoyed Lisbon as much as I do and perhaps will also to revisit someday. 

La bella Roma

A week ago I got to see how exchange life is in Italy when I visited my boyfriend who is on exchange in Rome at the LUISS Guido Carli University. We spent an extended weekend seeing the main tourist attractions, feeling the atmosphere at a football game and enjoying delicious Italian food and wine. 

I flew in to Rome on Thursday afternoon, but as the sun sets so early we did not have time to do much more than have dinner and enjoy the area my boyfriend lives in, San Lorenzo. It was a youthful and somewhat bohemian area that is especially popular among local students. Although there was not much else to see in the area, it was great for having dinners and drinks because prices are much lower than in the downtown tourist areas, yet the tastes may be even better and more authentic. 

On our first full day, we headed to the city center to walk around, and especially to get tickets for AS Roma's Sunday game. We got our tickets at an official AS Roma store and then headed to walk around the city. We saw Fontana di Trevi, the Spanish stairs and Piazza Navona before the sun had completely set. Given that it was November, I was surprised that every place was still packed with tourists - Rome seems to be highly popular at any time of the year. After it got dark, we walked to Fontana di Trevi again as well as to the Vittorio Emanuele II monument and Colosseum to see them in night lighting before heading to dinner where we enjoyed a menu of pasta, seafood and meat. 

Even at night time, Fontana di Trevi is packed.

Saturday we did even more sightseeing, almost too much for one day as we were completely tired out at the end. We started off with visiting Colosseum, although actually it would have been a better idea to go to Foro Romano first (they work with the same ticket but apparently the line is much, much shorter, so you can first visit Foro Romano and then pass the whole ticket line at Colosseum and walk right in with your ticket). After Foro Romano we passed the Campidoglio square on our way to Pantheon. Then we headed to the Vatican and entered Castel Sant'Angelo to get a beautiful view over the entire city. On our way back, by chance we stopped at Piazza Navona again during the pink sunset moment which pretty much made my day. This big square was perhaps my favorite place in the city with its fountains, artists selling their paintings, the amazing basilica and restaurants surrounding the square. 

On Sunday it was game time - AS Roma vs. Sassuolo! Even though I am more of a hockey girl and not all too crazy about football, going to a game was very exciting. I had only been to a game abroad once before, in Holland around the age of 8, so I did not know what to expect. Even though the game was against a smaller Italian team who did not have a huge fan base representing at the game, the atmosphere and emotions of local fans was quite amazing to experience. Everyone sang, cheered and booed loudly and  enthusiastically. Sadly, although AS Roma led 1-0 for the majority of the game, Sassuolo tied at overtime on the very last minute. The reaction of the crowd was quite heavy - someone actually set a tree on fire outside the stadium out of frustration.  

AS Roma scores!

As with any good vacation, time ran out and I feel that we could have spent many more days experiencing Rome. But it is always good to not do everything so you have a reason to go back. Now I am in Lisbon again and excited for the coming weeks of special visitors, trips and events!