3rd INTERNATIONAL WEEK 2015

3rd International Week - Internationalization (November 30, 2015 - December 4, 2015) 750 year´ Jubilee of České Budějovice (1265 - 2015)

The 3rd International Week took part in the first week of December, the beginning of the Advent period, when the city of České Budějovice starts to live the Christmas atmosphere with the traditional Christmas market and beautiful street decoration. This year edition was also dedicated to the 750 year´ Jubilee of České Budějovice, which was celebrated this year.

The University of South Bohemia was pleased to welcome 33 colleagues from 16 countries (Spain, the United Kingdom, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Germany, Finland, Greece, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey and France) and 25 universities, mostly administrative workers in International Relations, IT, Student affairs or Internal control departments but also academic teachers, who gave lectures to our students.

The core topic of the International Week was „Internationalization" and there were held workshops and discussion sessions concerning this current issue throughout the whole week.

The programme was also designed to present the highlights and excellent research projects of our university. Our international collegues could visit the agricultural farm and dog shelter of the Faculty of Agriculture; the facilities and archives of the Academic Library; the concert of the orchestra of the Faculty of Education and at the Faculty of Science they could meet researchers from the Center of Polar Ecology, which runs a field station in the islands of Spitzbergen in Norway, experts from the Institute of Applied Sciences (dept. of Forensic sciences and Criminality and dept. of Robotics and Embedded systems) who presented them the ongoing projects and even let them fly the hexacopter (drone) and finally the scientists from the department of Zoology showed them the laboratories of the reaserch of the Subterranean rodents (molerats), which are the largest labs of this kind in Europe.

Apart from visual, listening and contact perception our international collegues could experience the flavour of our university by tasting products made by the students of the Faculty of Agriculture (headcheese, white pudding, fresh white cheese, fermented vegetable, stevia jam), the Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters (freshwater fish specialities) and students of the International Student Club (traditional Czech Christmas sweets and other international specialities).

Our intention was also to show our international colleagues the beauties of our town and the South Bohemian region and so in the afternoons we organized trips to the magnificent UNESCO town Český Krumlov, the picturesque castle of Hluboká nad Vltavou and the world famous Budvar Brewery in České Budějovice, where we tasted unfiltered beer and had our farewell dinner with traditional Czech meal.

Thank you very much, our dear friends, for coming to the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice and for creating such a cheerful and fruitful atmosphere!!!