I have chosen Montenegro for my exchange because I wanted to visit mountainous country in Europe, close to the sea and with low prices, of course. Since there were two spots in Podgorica and I also wanted to ge there with my friend, Montenegro was perfect choise for us. There is no need to have visa to Montenegro, so traveling is also very easy. Before our arrival I have been in touch with my contact person. She tried, but whe wasn’t very helpful. She told me some elementary information, but she didn’t know if there is any kitchenwere or towels in our dorm….We went to Podgorica by train. Of course, it wasn’t very comfortable way to travel, but it was definitely the cheapest one. We travel for 24 hour from Bratislava to Podgorica and when we came to bus station, our contact person was late – Montenegrins are always late
Accomodation
Our dorm was classic student house, nothing special. It was little bit nicer than ours in Slovakia, but it wasn’t that important. The most important was, that we were almost all together there. It was close to hospital – we had to walk something about 10 minutes. There was also internet connection (but sometimes it wasn’t) and air-conditioning (but sometimes it wasn’t).
Hospital
I decided to be part of thoracic surgery departement, because I really wanted so see some heart surgery and oficially there wasn’t cardiac surgery to choose. My first day in hospital was so cool. (Or so typical for Montenegro.) I have been told my mentor is suspended, because he had a fist fight with his colleague, so I had three free days! Actually, I was OK with that, but it wasn’t very responsible. Fortunately, I had a small talk with one young doctor who I met in the hospital and he told me, that I can visit his departure – cardiac surgery. As I said earlier – officialy it wasn’t possible, so I was there alone! And it was really great, beause I learned a lot there. Almost every doctor spoke english and almost everyone in the departement was very helpful. I saw operations like valve replacement, by-passes, replacement of ascending aorta and so on….It was a wonderful experience.
Boarding
It was possieble to have lunch every day in hospital cafeteria. The food was quite bad, every day the same meal – some kind of general soup and some kind of general meat with general souce. Funny thing was that we found that food digusting almost every day, but girls from Russia didn’t. However, prices of food in supermarket and fast-food were almost the same as in Slovakia.
Organisation and free time
There were some trips organised by MoMSIC (montenegrian part of IFMSA), we knew about them before Exchange, but we didn’t know prices. The first day we relised the prices are too high for us, so we chose only three of five possible trips. At that moment we were sad, but later, we relised we can make the same trips much more cheaper. But they didn’t tell us about this option – that’s why I think MoMSIC is not very responsible and helpful organisation. There were only two responsible people there and they didn’t care about us at all. We organised by ourselves every party we had (even international food and drinking party), every visit of the town and also some trips. Trips organised by them were expensive, but I have to say, there were also really cool – espacially weekend at the moutains of Montenegro was great! In general, Montenegro is small country, so it’s easy to travel and during one month we visited almost every part of the county. The sea was located aproximately 60 kilometres from Podgorica.
At the end, I have to say we had some organisation problems, but if I could choose again I would choose the same. Definitely not because of MoMSIC, but this country is simply amazing! I met a lot of nice people there, some of them I miss even two months later and that is the most important!
