A few years ago, I travelled along the Croatian coast so coming to Zagreb is not my first time in Croatia. I had never visited Zagreb, though. During my first few days in the capital, I enjoyed the great weather and the beautiful buildings. In general, people here seem to be very friendly and helpful. Most young people speak English quite well and even older people who don't always know so much English try to help as much as they can. Even though Helsinki has about the same number of inhabitants as Zagreb, I must say that the trams, buses and trains here are often filled with people – this is something you don't experience often in Helsinki. Another thing that you don't see often in Finland are all the lonely cats and dogs wandering around Zagreb. Yet another observation about Croatia is of course the prices. Compared with Finland, things here are cheaper, especially eating out in a restaurant, renting an apartment, and buying train tickets. This is of course something that I really like here.

At school, many things seem a bit old-fashioned and more official than in Finland. For example, in Finland, you call teachers by their first names, and without any titles such as ”professor”. It also seems that in Croatia the teacher talks a lot whereas in Finland pupils do a lot of work in pairs and groups. Working in shifts was also a big surprise for me – this is something that we don't do in Finland. Another surprise was that pupils here don't go out during breaks and that the breaks are only 5 or 10 minutes long; at home we have 15 minute breaks and pupils in general go out and play. It is great that in Zagreb you don't have to pay for the school books – this is the case in the whole of Finland, too. In Finland, you also don't have to pay for school lunches; they are free for pupils. At Sesvete Sopnica, I like it that pupils are not allowed to use their mobile phones in class. Also, the pupils have been very nice and friendly towards us interns which is of course a brilliant thing!


Near the finnish sauna in the town of Daruvar