"I really want to see the Tatras," said Aistė Černauskytė, a political science student from Lithuania, after having laid her eyes on the landscape of Slovakia during her bus trip to Bratislava. Aistė is one of the international students who arrived to spend a semester in Bratislava. She spent 21 hours on the bus from Vilnius, across Poland, right to the Slovak capital. "Central Europe isn't very well-known to me," says Aistė Černauskytė, who appreciates the strategically good location of Bratislava for traveling.

The program allows students to study abroad without having to pay additional tuition at their host universities. Participants also don't have to worry about lost time: All credits earned while studying abroad with Erasmus transfer to their home institutions. Students also get small monthly stipends from their home universities, which depend on where they go and how much money their schools have available to support them while they're there.