y Personal Expe ience as an IAESTE - Trainee in Graz, Austria

y Personal Expe ience as an IAESTE - Trainee in Graz, Austria

MyDamejaAbmad.lama

Jordanian

student ofInduattial EngineeringintheUniftniiyofJOIdanwhoMd.trlIining experience'"

summer"

^{in~Austria.Ishou1dhoneatIy}

saythat through

my

wholestayin AustriaIgottoexperience nothingbotkindpeop1es withgentlelIOUIs facingme

evayw-

hereI 10.In

my

hosteI, at work,in

meetings,

wbiIe

walking

in the stteets,andtno8tIikelywbDewaitingforthetram.

My trainingwas inthe teehnical univCrsityofGraz.Tbc6eIdofmy training was "Research and

DeveIopmcnt",

asIworkedonthe instituteweb-siteon

spcci6c

tasks concemed.witb tbe

upgmding

of the pages and introdueing ncw techniquesofteaehing

approaehes

especially in the fjeld of

"E-Learning", whieh was an

extremely excitiDg

fieId andaoew

experiencetohave.

I badmyowndcskand computer toaccOmpIishthetaskstbatIwas givenfromtimetotime.I would alwaysbeaskcdto

join

^tbe

group

whentheygotolunch,and take me out to someplaces out side Graz.

All

of themwerenice,ttying a1lthe time tospeakwithme

in . EngIish,

andto

speak

toeachother inE&JgIishinmyptaenet;butonce aGermanword

pops

in

the

air eve- ryoneshiftstoit,and asI badno clueabout

decodiog

thatlangwge IwouIdfinishmydishquietI}t ThewcekendtourswereIlways in- teresting as awaytobJeaktherou-

11

11 _ _

tine at eaeh end of the weck,soitwasalwaysen- joyabletojustgetout of Graz andmeetoewpeop- 1efrom different coun- triesdoinganIAESTE -

traininginVtenna,Linz, Leoben oranyother cityinAustria.

. . . .

7 '

Ialwayswaotcdtohavethespecialty of Austrianfood,theoneandonly .

"Schnitzel", I had some failed attempts to have this dish in VJCDDa, as Iwas&ccdwiththedis- appointment that the restaurant onlyprovidedSchnitzelsofpork, andasIcouldn'teat

park

Iwould Ilway decline, but the Schnitzel kepthauntingmethrougb-outmy stay, untilODedayIheardabout a restaurant in Graz that offen Schnitzel from either pork or turkey, so I was automatieaUy there, the restaurantwas the"3 Golden Kugel" trauslated from German,andI badthe Chanceto trythe famous turkey Schnitzel afteralI...nice.

ButIhave neverbeensurpriscd as mueh as I was from the huge . amounts of Beer the Austrian people have, maybe ooly for me becausethe idea of having alcohol ina~is out of the qudtion, and it would show most of the time, as for example when we went to a restaurant for lunch during werk,wewerearoundtwdve

pcopIc,

sowhenthewaitress came totake thedrinksorder the sequence went like this:''Beer Beer Beer . Beer...IceTea Beer Bcer ".

And now, after two months of IAESTE - trainingin Austria,I found out that the whole period oftr2iningin Austria wentfast, I was total1yg1adwith this experi- ence,bad.aproper practical training experienee, got to know more abouta foreigncountry-Austriain this case- andgot to knowmon:

peop1efrom different nationalities, which was as fulftlling an

experienceascanbe.

B-