I never planned to fall in love with Slovenia. I came here for an internship and a product I believed in. What I didn’t expect was that this country and this experience would quietly reshape everything I thought I knew about myself.
My name is Jaden, I’m Dutch, and I’m halfway through my Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs exchange at Waboost, a startup based at Technology Park Ljubljana. Waboost uses nanobubble technology to treat water in agriculture and livestock farming: chemical-free, energy-efficient, and with measurable results. A pig farm reference case showed 100% coliform elimination within five days and a 10% reduction in feed consumption. My job is to bring this technology to the Dutch greenhouse and horticulture market.
It started with cold emails. Around twenty-five of them, carefully written, sent to what I thought were the right people. Nothing came back. Silence. That was the moment I sat with an uncomfortable question: am I actually cut out for this? I had arrived here confident. I have always been driven, disciplined, and sales-minded. But no response has a way of making you reconsider everything.
Then came the cold calls. And honestly, I kept putting them off. There is always one more thing to prepare, one more script to tweak, one more reason to wait until tomorrow. But eventually I just picked up the phone, and that is where everything changed. You quickly realize that no preparation fully equips you for a live conversation with a company director. You learn by doing, by fumbling, by finding your rhythm mid-sentence. Now, a few weeks in, I have it reasonably under control. My business communication, both in Dutch and English, has improved more in these weeks than in months back home. There is something about speaking with real decision-makers that sharpens you fast.
I came here already confident. I will leave more ambitious. That is the difference. Ljubljana has given me perspective I did not know I was missing. It is a calm, compact city with a pace that suits me. After a long week of calls and follow-ups, I can be in nature within thirty minutes. The Slovenian countryside gives me something Amsterdam never could: real quiet.
I also have personal roots here. My girlfriend lives in Ljubljana, and being close to her has made this feel less like an assignment and more like the beginning of something. I miss the Netherlands, my family, the familiar rhythm of home, but I feel genuinely comfortable here. More than comfortable, actually. I want to move here permanently one day. This exchange has given me clarity about my future that I did not expect to find on a work trip.
I hope to continue working with Waboost even after the program ends. The market we are building together does not stop when my exchange does, and neither does my belief in what this technology can do.
If there is one thing I would tell a future Erasmus participant, it is this: stop preparing so much and start doing. The phone call you keep delaying is the one that will teach you the most. And the country you arrive in as a stranger might just become home.