My year abroad took place during the 2005/6 academic year, with the first half spent in St Petersburg, the latter in Belgrade.
St Petersburg is a spectacular city, with its Venetian canals and kitsch imperial palaces reflecting Peter the Great’s vision of a European Russia. The time I spent there with friends like Mati, Bickram, Roz, Rachel, Sam and Kate was superb, including visits to Peterhof, the Hermitage and the Yusupov Palace, and we took short, pre-Christmas trips to Helsinki, Tallinn, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo. Living with my landlady, Tamara, was also a fun and culturally enriching experience, and I learned so much from her.
In Belgrade, I lived in student halls with friends Rob, Adam, Kate, Alex, Voja and Mike. Belgrade is a vibrant, bustling city, and socialising was a large part of our time there. We tried delicious new food, met some wonderful people, experienced a huge football sticker swapping market, and went along to observe a bizarre memorial service to Slobodan Milošević. During the summer months, once our studies had finished, we purchased a Balkan Flexipass, and travelled for several weeks in Turkey, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Romania, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia.
It was an exceptionally enjoyable year, after which it was wonderful to catch up with friends and lecturers such as Nick Luker, Vladislava Ribnikar, David Norris and Cynthia Marsh in Nottingham for our final year. My richly-varied experiences in Nottingham and abroad prompted me to move to Russia for a further 2 years following graduation, where I worked as an interpreter/translator and part-time teacher. Since then, I have been teaching Russian at Bolton School Boys’ Division, where it is particularly popular, with around 50 boys beginning study each year, and several reading the language at Nottingham following their A Levels. I look back on my time as a student with real fondness, and thank all at the University for contributing to that.
Nick Wyatt (Russian and Serbian, 2003-2007)