For our final week in Comparative Healthcare, we spent five days exploring all around Slovenia! Although we only had a week, it was just enough time to get to experience all the highlights of this small but incredibly beautiful country. I went into the program knowing a little more about Austria and not sure what to expect from our last stop in Maribor, Slovenia, but I absolutely loved it. The country is full of never ending gardens and green hills with small mountain villages in between. All of the people we met were so kind and welcoming, it felt like home right away and somewhere I would love to return to.

We arrived from Vienna and started right away the next morning with guest lectures on Slovenian history in both politics and culture. Similarly to Graz, Maribor is the second largest city in its country and full of young working people. We loved walking around the cobblestone streets and getting to know the lively town. The end of our first day consisted of wine tasting at the restaurant housing the oldest vine in the world and taking the little red tourist train around the whole city to get the lay of the land. To begin our second day, we headed for Ljubljana with some stops along the way. We visited a nursing home, a family owned bee farm, a farm and buschenshank (farm to table meal) for lunch, a medicinal herbal garden, and then ended with a short walking tour of Ljubljana with an incline ride up to the top of the castle. On our way out of Ljubljana, we participated in a CPR/first response drill at an emergency simulation center where we did a mock rescue of a patient in cardiac arrest, which was very high stress and lots of fun. We continued on to Lake Bled which was absolutely one of the high points of the week. We took a small boat out to the island followed by swimming in the lake and trying the traditional Lake Bled cake.

The last two days of the week we spent in Maribor fitting in as many activities as we could. We visited the University Clinical Center for a tour of the ER and ICU where we got to wear PPE and walk through the actual patient rooms and facilities. I also loved the mountain rescue presentation followed by a mock rescue of our professor, including putting him on a stretcher and pulling him up the mountain with ropes and a pulley. Our last day we spent a the Faculty of Health Sciences completing a CPR VR workshop, visiting the puppet theater, and touring the Maribor Castle museum. I absolutely loved every single activity and all the time we spent in Slovenia.

During the program, the topic I considered outside of our direct coursework was natural health remedies, specifically horticulture. When visiting the apothecary in Graz, we learned about how pharmacies have their labs where they make certain creams and pills for consumers, including different house made herbal teas as treatments. Patients can come in and express their symptoms or concerns and the pharmacist creates a tea specific to their needs (often for a cough or cold/flu symptoms). In Slovenia we visited the medicinal herbal garden, where the owner gives her plants to local pharmacies as well as creates her own teas, ointments, and sprays for different health needs. Of course it’s still common in the US to use natural remedies for illness, but in my area in an urban setting or maybe just in my personal life I haven’t seen much of it. It’s also interesting to me that is it recognized and utilized by physicians and pharmacies and prescribed to patients. This is a topic I find very interesting and I’m excited about learning more to incorporate into my own life. It can be a great way to aid illness without intervention of too many chemicals or unnecessary treatments. Of course, in serious circumstances medication will always have the most immediate and dependable results, but I’m definitely interested in learning more.