It is becoming a tradition for both Nitra universities to organize at the end of the calendar year Student Days of Nitra Universities (SDNU). Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra (Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre, abbrev. UKF) in cooperation with Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra (Slovenská poľnohospodárska univerzita v Nitre, abbrev. SPU) put their ideas, effort and energy together and organize a variety of attractive enjoyable events and activities for their students. The program of SDNU is rich in social, cultural and sport events. Among these, both our universities prepared (with assistance of their ESN sections) the second annual event “ERASMUS+ DAY” which was held on November 25, 2015 for international students admitted to the UKF and SPU within various exchange programmes (Erasmus, Erasmus Mundus, etc.) and bilateral agreements. The aim was to create activity full of new knowledge and entertainment as a funny competition on travelling around Europe and around the world with Erasmus+ programme. The event was also supported by participation of Slovak secondary school students admitted to UKF for a short study period under the unique project called “Mini-Erasmus”. ERASMUS+ DAY was not just a relaxing event for participants; there was another, equally important objective to promote Erasmus+ programme and participating countries in an entertaining way (such as original presentations, quizzes, etc.), which offered Slovak students possibility to socialize with international students and learn interesting things about their home country directly from the participating international students.

The event was open by Vice-rectors and Erasmus coordinators of UKF and SPU who cordially welcomed all participants. The programme of this event consisted of two main lines - information and competitive line. Competitive line consisted of two parts. In the first part, international students were divided into teams according to their country of origin and competed in presenting their booth decorated with souvenirs, leaflets, national dishes, and national flag and with prepared ppt presentation introducing their country, institution, culture, language.

The quality of presentation of their country and booth decorations was assessed by UKF and SPU Erasmus coordinators. In the second part, Slovak students were divided into 3-member teams, they visited booth of each country and collected points by answering questions asked by international students in the booth. And since students of UKF and SPU still keep a natural wholesome level of rivalry, competing teams from both universities tried to be the best and win. Two teams of international students from UKF (Belgium and Turkey) and two teams from SPU (Romania, which had a joint booth with Poland and Colombia, and Uzbekistan) win for the best booth presentation. Within the second part of competition, the most points were collected by Slovak teams of secondary school students (Mini-Erasmus students). All winning teams were awarded prizes from both universities of Nitra. In the context of the second informative line, Erasmus coordinators of both universities provided information services about the benefits and possibilities of the Erasmus+ programme and application procedure for study or traineeship to Slovak participants in Erasmus+ booth during the whole event.

ERASMUS+ DAY was once again a very successful event thanks to the cooperation of both universities and their ESN sections, and thanks to the enthusiasm of all Slovak participants and internationals from France, Germany, Turkey, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Colombia, Uzbekistan, Ireland, Belgium and Italy who, along with their study duties, offered time and enthusiasm to prepare this worthwhile event and shared with us and our students a piece of their home. We are also pleased by participation of secondary school students (Mini-Erasmus students) who were, in this way, given the opportunity to join and see, in addition to standard teaching process and everyday student life at UKF, some of our extracurricular activities devoted to further development and purposeful entertainment of our students so that they become motivated to consider studying at our university in the future.

• Photogallery