A 6 day working week

Now I am tired. We had this week two 'Fridays' because next week we will have also the Friday off. Next Thursday is Hungarian Revolution day, so that is always a holiday, but now we get the Friday also so we have a long weekend. So we had the same subject and lecturer for two days in a row and for 3 hours each. At Friday we had our first real laboratory. It was okay, the instructions we get were actually a little constricted and I wouldn't now how to calculate what we are supposed to calculate to the report if I wouldn't have the course of Combustion technology here too.

One of the best news this week was that we managed to change one date of an mid-term exam so we could go now to Pacs nuclear power plant. That will be probably quite interesting. Thought I think we will not see much but at least the professor who will be there seemed a vice man. He had been working for more than 30 years building(mean planning them and been at the projects) in West-Germany and Hungary so I think he might tell us something interesting. And as usually I did some sports during the week, but we didn't have this week our football-league so just swimming and running this time. After the hard week we went to visit some Pubs at the centre of Budapest.

Delicious Burger

Sky Bar

Some underground bar and some bicycles they rent

From Margared Bridge to the Pest side

The track line that goes round the Island

Margared Island

More regular weekend at Budapest

Friday I went again to swim to Margared Island. I went there at the morning around 10 and it was quite quiet again so I had a good training session. Short school day, we had fuel cells as a topic and the lecturer said before he had talked about them even an hour that he don't have anything to add. Just asked if we had any questions and wished us all a good weekend!

After that I went home, eat some and went with one other Finnish ERASMUS-student to Octoberfest, which was held at a park called Varosliget. It was really cool place and the festival was actually in a fake-lake which was dried just for the event. Well its never very deep, probably less than half meters so it isn't so big task to do. There were some different small breweries from Hungary and some from other countries also(Big ones from Germany, Poland and also small(or at least unknown) from Belgium).

Banana beer

Pink elephant(cherry beer)

View and tent of Paulaner

Saturday was just for some studying and taking easy but Sunday I went again to cycling to the Buda hills. The view were again magnificent and I probably was able to enjoy them even more than the first time since the route and the streets were more familiar. Though didn't take many pictures because enjoying the speed.

From the first break before really long uphill

Little tower at the turning point of the trip

 

Back to the business

After the great weekend it was time to start the school and study-life again. I caught also a flu at the weekend so I was unable to play football at Monday. Team won thought, so it was good. The early week went quite fast I had a lot to do in the school, very long days from 8-18 and 8-16. We had our first laboratory in Combustion technology. Though it was really short and we just watched the lecturer to use weld and show us the flame. And also he showed how a bunsen burner works with a different mixture. The main thing was to recognise the difference between premixed and diffuse flame, and to understand how to manage the burning.

Also we get the date of our first test and it is one week after it was supposed to be. Now I might be unable to go visit Pacs Nuclear Power Plant at the same day. Though I wrote to the lecturer so maybe he will be able to organise a test for me in a different time. I hope so especially 'cos the visit to Pacs is also told to be obligatory for other course.

Wednesday I heard at the Air Conditioning about a weird sounding custom. If we pass the exams(get 50% of the points) we will have to go to the oral exam in January! But if we get more than 63% of the points we get the grade 3 and we don't need to go to the further exams.

Today we had a visit to Livable Future Park, which was a disappointment. Yes, maybe it is really energy independent, but really almost the only thing they do with the energy is warming and cooling the houses. For example they didn't seem to use the computers upstairs, actually except one, they were all covered. Moreover they didn't have yet a central-controlled energy system, just monitoring was possible so it wasn't really so unique. Though it was good example that yes we have the technology to do this kind of a thing. Only reason why we don't do it is the money and that traditional ways of consuming energy are in use and energy production with fossil fuels is too cheap.

Second thing that was good today was I went for a run after a long long break!

The solar panels: at the time they were producing 6-9 kW energy

Smallest hydro-microturbine I have ever seen. Claimed capacity 200 W but because of leaves etc.
was producing just 50 W of energy

About 40 kWh batteries(Twice as much as in
Michubishi iMIEV and half of Tesla Model S)

Wind turbine(20 kW, I think the same size than in LUT)

Yeah, they have heat pumps

Dog and a red car, one animal per blog, I think it is must?

A great weekend in great company

Pictures tell more than the words. Great weekend, I couldn't even imagine a better one! With my girlfriend we visited some of the sights, restaurants, pub's etc. and had a great time. Forget completely all the school-stuff and other boring ordinary stuff for the weekend! This is really a beautiful city with great restaurants and nightlife

Playing football and some other sports

Monday
The 5 a side league started at 21 o'clock and we managed to get easy victory of it. The games were played in Buda-side at the fields of University of Physical Education. I scored our first goal and two later in the game and we won the game 13-3. It was too easy and most of the intensity of the game went down quite quickly much before half-time. We played 2x25 minutes and I think the next games will be harder and more fun also to play. After the game we went to celebrate to Morrison's though I left early because the school starts on Tuesdays at 8.15.

Tuesday
We were introduced and are supposed to do a presentation with a quite new software called Prezi. It seemed quite interesting and at least a way to make more interesting presentations. And it is Hungarian invention!! We had also again one the best lecture of the week: Environmental Management of Energy. We had a mini-test where the lecturer asks just really something trivial questions that are not related to the subject. For instance he asked this time when did Roman Empire collapse? What were the names of Cristoffer Columbo's ships? And so on.. After that we discussed about electric cars(featuring Jeremy Clarkson(we saw a clip from Top Gear)) and congestion charges. How they work in London and Stockholm?

Wednesday
Today again in Air conditioning something strange happens. The second lecturer in the 'calculation practises' quite literally repeats and tells about the same than we heard just couple hours before by another lecturer. Okay, she told us little bit more practically the things but no other difference there! In addition they used both exactly the same powerpoint-slides. After school I went straight to Margared Island to swim. Place was nice and at 'cos I went there 12:30 I actually got a lane just for me! Swimming was fun and really tough since the last time is from the winter. And little bit later in the afternoon I went to play football in the park nearby!

Just to show you, here is also new buildings and this is where I have two of my classes a week

Thursday

Will be too long, way too long... I have a day off and I will probably do some sports and read for a test. But it will be just torture to have to wait till the evening when my girlfriend arrives here

Yeah I was lazy to take pictures this week. Maybe some more later this week but I don't promise there will be.

Falling in love (with cycling)

I went for a little ride to the Buda-moutains. At the morning I had a little trouble 'cos my tires were little loose and when I tried to pump them my pump made everything just worse. So I went to the shop were I bought the bike and asked the guy there to pump them and he was kind and did it. (Bikebase). After this I started my trip and I really loved it. I mean cycling at the mountains, especially going uphill. It was harder than I thought but now I now it is something I wanna do more and try to get better. Below is a map where I draw to route as well as I remember, it might be a little different than the real route I took and a few pictures from the trip. The streets were quiet, altitude differences quite huge and the first part going uphill was pretty slow. Downhill part was really fast and also a bit scary though my breaks works perfectly but still you need to break almost all the time to not ride too fast. At the hills also the streets were in better condition than in the city and in addition I saw few nice homes there and a Porsche 911.

The route

Pretty cool view to the city between the trees

Steep and narrow street

Steep street again

Nice houses with an awesome view to the city

Back home and the bike

Next was the visit to the Parliament House. Of course we waited like an hour to get in(always in here!). We met at 3pm and get in the Parliament House at 4pm. The building was really nice and we  had there a guided tour for 30 minutes. We saw the session hall, a cigar hall where the Members of Parliament go between the sessions and which was rounded by statues of regular working hungarians(from early1900s or late 1800s) to remind representatives who they are really working for, the main entrance inside and the crawl hall(where we weren't allowed to take pictures).

Statue just in a corridor

The session hall

Cigar hall or just a break room, with the worker statues(really cool idea!)

Main entrance from inside

Roof of the main entrance

Parliament building outside, I know not a good picture
just from the place we were waiting. Better ones and some history of the place

Beginning to feel home

It's now been 30 days here in Budapest and I am really getting used to living here. It is first time I really live in a city and loving it! Everything is so near, for example this big shopping centre, gym, train station, metro, pubs and clubs. Do I miss anything from Finland? Well, not really. Maybe little bit the fresher air and the forests you can go for a run, but still the Margaret Island here is okay and the views just are magnificent so I am good right here. The only thing I really miss from Finland is the fresh fish. Of course it is obvious that here far in the mainland the fish isn't fresh anymore but this was something I just didn't think before. Maybe because in Finland I have just been so used to having fish desk in every grocery shop and buying something from them every week.

This week was just school, sports and recovering from the last weekends Kamikaze-trip. Thursday we went to register our football team to this 5 a side league and our first game will be on Monday 29.9. The organiser laughed and asked how it is possible that in a Spanish team there is also one Finnish guy :D I think the other teams are all just one nation teams or maybe there is some with a truly mix-nation teams so I kind of understand his question. But well, on monday he will see how it works ;) Though I am waiting for the games to start, still the best moment of next week will be when my girlfriend comes to visit me on Thursday. I am so happy she is coming :)

Yesterday I went to check out some pubs with three German guys. It was fun and we discovered quite  many places. We went for example to Szimpla kert(unfortunately didn't take myself any good pictures there, but i put a link to tripadvisor, really cool place there), Vittula(a cellar bar without anything fancy in it, but just some benches, cheap drinks, lots of texts and pictures on the walls and a nice, cosy atmosphere). Other places were not so special, sports bar where you can watch American football or a one where we played table football. Both of the places(and also Szimpla) were these bars in a courtyard, just like a tent over it. These bars have usually also many rooms with different music and atmosphere around the yard. This kind of pubs are really typical here in Budapest. Also the Morrison's 2, where many of the exchange students go on Mondays is a place like that.

A restaurant which was probably also a club, but we didn't wait to see what it would be later.

Klub Vittula and one of the walls

Next week I will have the first, no actually the first exam on Friday. Then I can tell more about the education and the quality of teaching and how difficult these exams are. This far I have been surprised and really wondering how do the people learn here. Only by reading themselves or what? The calculation 'practises' are really only a seminars where the teacher tells us the problem and then straight writes the answer to the blackboard. And most of the problems have been really simple. Last week there were few good lectures, for example Heat Transfer and Environmental Management of Energy, but at least two really ridiculously low points in teaching. First, at the Digital Pedagogy we use this Moodle system which is equal to my home University's system. The lecturer said that every week we need to read every week an article she will post there. She hasn't yet posted any article though its already 4. lesson coming and last lesson she told two who hasn't yet registered there to Moodle to do it(we were supposed to do this like two weeks ago!) and it took like 30 minutes for those to manage to do it. It was so ridiculous I was just reading the heat transfer course book all the time, but really! I don't think anyone learned anything from that. Rest of the lesson was okay, but the first half was just a waste of our time! Second low-point of the teaching was at Air Conditioining. We just went through wery simple equations and after it we calculated the heat losses for a room. The thing why it was awful was because we went so slowly and in the calculations the lecturer just stuck on to some uninterested and unimportant details and we used like 30 minutes just to calculate the dimensions of the room. Something every high school student could do also with the same standard with the instructions we were using. Well I hope it is going to change or at least the exams can't be really hard!

A nuclear reactor in our schools garden, how cool is that!