It is unclear why, but upon leaving Austria, Tesla choose Maribor, Slovenia as his next stop. He took his first job as a draftsman for a local engineering firm. Tesla spent his spare time in a pub called Happy Peasant where he played chess and cards. In March of the following year, Tesla's father came to Maribor and pleaded with him to return home, but Tesla refused.
Tesla enrolled at the Austrian Polytechnic School in Graz on a Military Border scholarship. In his first year, Tesla never missed a lecture, made the highest grades possible and started a Serbian culture club. During his second year, Tesla came into conflict with Professor Poeschl over the Gramme dynamo when he suggested that commutators weren't necessary. At the end of the second year, Tesla lost his scholarship and took up gambling. Near the end of the third year, Tesla stopped attending lectures and dropped out the following year.
Tesla returns to Gospić in spite of his father's instructions otherwise. Shortly after arriving he contracts Cholera. He is bedridden for 9 months and was near death many times. Tesla's father, in a moment of desperation, agreed to send him to an engineering school if he recovered from the illness.
Tesla went to Tomingaj near Gračac to recover from Cholera and avoid the Army, from which he was a fugitive, due to required a compulsory three-years' service. Tesla later stated, "For most of this term I roamed in the mountains, loaded with a hunter's outfit and a bundle of books, and this contact with nature made me stronger in body as well as in mind."
Tesla moves to Karlovac (Carlstadt), Croatia and stays with his aunt and Col. "Old War-Horse" Branković. He attends "Higher Real Gymnasium" where teacher Martin Sekulić teaches him math and physics and has a decisive influence on him. Tesla graduates Gimnazije Karlovac a year early.
