The arrival was very good organized. Thanks to Global friends' pick up-service a global friends student took care of me when I arrived at T-Centralen. Together we picked up the key for my room from a key case (since I landed in Stockholm after the opening hours of the UAC office) where an UAC headmaster deposited my key.

The introduction day was very informative and it was a very nice atmosphere. It was good that there were many people from different universtity organisations eg. from UAC, Language courses, global friends etc. which gave lots of information about what they are doing & offering and to whom we can go if there are any problems.

I lived at Pax via UAC arrangement. That was very good, because I did not have to search for private housing (which is very difficult especially when you are still in your home country).

The room was OK, the furniture a little old and showed traces of use, bathroom was new. But the location at Västra skogen was great. The costs may be a little to high, especially as long as the bed bug problem continues to be in Pax & Strix.

I went to some events organized by global firends and some KI parties at Solna campus organized by MF.
But I didn't join extern (ie. non-university) sport club or similar.

I did make many Swedish friends to whom I stay in touch via the internet.

I chose to go on a exchange because I wanted to get to know something new and liked the challenge to go to another country and study & work there in a different language. I chose SwedenI because I like Scandinavia and KI is a world class medical university. This exchange was a great possibility to combine both.

Furthermore, I chose to go with the Erasmus program because I think it is a little bit better organized than going as a free mover. Also, there was a chance to get some founding.


The study abroad-information that was given by the home university and by KI was very informative and good but the application procedure itself was a little confusing: you have to fill out several forms with exactly the same information (3x for home university, 1x for KI, 1x for mobility grant, 1x for UAC and several times for the learning agreement) but all documents have a different dead-lines; you get the information about the next step only after you filled out the last form. It would be great to have an overview over all required documents & forms (incl. dead-lines and persons to whom you have to send them).

It was a really great time at KI. Everything was well organized. Everybody was nice and very helpful. I highly recommend to do an exchange to KI. I even convinced my girlfirend to do a clinical traineeship at Karolinska next year.

Yes, I participated in the advanced swedish course of Studiefrämjandet. It was a 5 week course with 2 lessons per week.

Course was very good, I learnt a lot. I liked the 2 lessons per week arrangement (so you don't have a chance to forget what you have learnt the lesson before since the time intervall between two units is short).

The swedish study environment was very nice & warm. A lot of docents were really keen on teaching and provided lots of information on different media (eg. hand-outs, lecture slides online, old exams incl. answers). Very helpful are the half-time exams; I whish we would had something like this in my home university. At home university I often have the feeling that the docents hold some informations back on purpose, so they can ask that in the exams. Here at KI I got the impression the teachers really want the students to learn and provide all necessary information and offer their help for that.

The practical lab exercise could be improved: They were very short and not very challenging. Especially for biomedicine students it is needed to handle and know a lot of different lab methods and the knowledge to cope with your aquired data.
(all this above applies to the infection & immunity course BIOX05)

The "Courses"-tab of my exchange report doesn't work at my computer, so I write it here:

Linda Johansson-project (15p):
That was my first big lab project. I had a very nice & patient supervisor who showed me all basic lab methods & procedures as well as several special methods and bacterial work. Some of the results of that project were even included in a publication which was recently published by Journal of Innate Immunity.

Markus Moll-project (30p):
Here I got me very own project, where I learnt many new techniques incl. the work in a bio safety level 3 lab and to plan and to perform bigger experiments. The results I obtained will be included in a manuscript. The work with my supervisor was very good, he even offered me to write my diploma thesis in his group. which I grateful accepted. So I will be back at KI in summer 2011.