Alex Iliev

A freshman at AUBG who enjoys two different ways of starting his day. Either a good egg and bacon breakfast or a coffee and a cigarette. As a Bulgarian who’s been speaking Russian for most of his life he feels there’s a change in his character every time he switches between languages.

“There is a theory that when you speak another language your character changes, and I have noticed my character changes as well,” he said.

When he speaks Bulgarian he’s more closed off and introverted. In contrast, when he speaks Russian he feels more comfortable, since he’s used to speaking it with his friends. His mentality when speaking Russian is, even if he knows the person or not, that he has a friendly character.

His ingenuity has helped him more than once. Looking back to his childhood, he used to play a lot of computer games. His computer didn’t work without its charger, knowing this his parents locked it inside a suitcase, wanting him to stop playing.Bored one day, he took a really long knife and pried the lock open. For three years he secretively played his games, without his parents knowing.

“That’s how I found this actually really useful ability, now when I look at it,” he said.

He would need this ability once more when he got locked out of his building first week of the semester. Coming back from an event, Iliev and his roommate, who lived off campus, arrived to a closed front door. Using his ‘thinking abilities’ he found a long piece of metal and he broke it in two. He used his lockpicking-skills to break and open the front door’s lock. If any of the neighbours would ask, they would answer

“Oh yeah we noticed that as well, oh the hooligans.”

Before heading off to university, his grandmother taught him some useful and budget friendly student dishes. After a good brainstorming session, he and his grandmother had reinvented the way they would prepare a proper egg and bacon breakfast. And to really save money she gave him some new ways to make student ramen. Instead of just using the spices that came with the package, he could spice it up and use some other condiments.

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Jonas Løken Estenstad is an Erasmus exchange student from Norway, at AUBG. He has never had to break in into his own home.