Tips on accommodation and travel

The best price we got for  the accommodation is by making group booking in one of the centrally located 4 stars Hotel which lies just 3minute walk from the university where the exchange activity

 www.mercure.com

The hotel was suggested by the hosting university, though they have no special agreements with the hotel but still you get very good price if you contact them directly and make early booking

Make sure that check all hotels in the area to get the best price.

Transportation from the airport to the hotel and the other way around, the best and most secured is the minibuses that you can book on- line advance; they are fairly cheap and guaranteed

For internal transportation buy a card that can cover trains buses and trams it is cheaper and practical, you need to go to the central station in Budapest to buy that from the special office

Do not use any transportation without paying! Always ask people where to pay if you do not have the card   

All the teaching was in English

there were  several students from the hosting university who were very active and engaged, the English language was not a barrier at all for them but some times we felt at they are maintaining even better english comparing to some students in the course.

The hungarian students are welcoming and sicially active the langauge they maintained was essential to creat very good beering supportive environment to all participants  

The experience was full of social activities. First day we have gathering and meeting with the students at one of the international famous cafeteria in Budapest, the second night we have a nice reception arranged by the hosting university. Most excitedly was the city tour arranged by the hosting university and finally we had fantastic farewell dinner where all students and teacher have to sing a song from their home country  

I thing as teacher it is of great benefit to us to be exposed to other European and non European university education cultures and environment, that will give us better understanding on how we can internationalize our education and make it better responses to these cultures needs

There were quite interesting activities along the course for example we made a study visit to the Food and agriculture organization regional European office.  We made a tour in the hosting university and met some of the key staff and professors. Future collaboration already discussed and there will be future similar activities in the future  

I knew about this program from my unit director Agneta Yngve, as she is the course director to the Summer school ( EU-basics Public health nutrition)  that I went to participate as teacher in.

The course held in coordination with a European university in coordination with the EU commission

With the representative of the EU commission that was invited to be as one of the lecturer in the course we conducted distance (telephone) workshop at 16-17June 20011 to prepare for the course

In addition we have several communications through e-mails and telephone with the hosting university (Semmelweis University in Hungary) for the preparations

The experience in Budapest gave me better insight about the education systems in Hungary. I noticed that they are advanced in many areas related to my field of education but at the same time they seems still need to be upgraded in the teaching methodology we are following here in KI

It will be of great value if we continue coordination with such university

Most of the teaching was to facilitate the group work in addition to short seminars

The students from the host university were very intereted to be exposes to the teaching strategy that we followed as they are not use to that. and they felt that we are very close to them and help them in many ways

The average of teaching were 8 hours aday for 8 days, moslty group facilitating.

we have to stay some extra hours as they were some intensive work with short dead times