Student Card

Most of this morning was spent trying to get a student card and transportation card. Everything is more complicated because it is summer and there are a lot of people at the Technical University on vacation. It is also complicated because the local IAESTE president, Pali, only speaks Slovak and German. This morning there were four of us walking all over campus trying to figure things out, Pali, Martin, Stephen, and me. Stephen is also from the U.S. and is working in the Mechanical Engineering department. Martin is from Austria and speaks German and English so he was translating for Pali. So communication had to go from Slovak to German to English!

Anyways, Martin and I were able to get student cards that say that we are students at the Technical University of Kosice. These cards will allow us to buy lunch at the cantines on campus for half of the price. One of the problems that we had after getting the cards was that the person to activate this feature of the cards is on vacation. I think we will have to wait until next week to get them to work in this way. Another thing is that the cards can be used as transportation passes if we pay for one month of bus and tram use. Pali went to the office where this can be done this afternoon but for some reason was not able to get them running. I will find out tonight what happened and what we need to do next.

At the moment we are buying 30 minute transportation tickets at the little newspaper stands near the tram and bus stops. Hopefully we wont have to do this much longer.