Leoben is a quite small but very nice city. It is very clean and people here are very kind. About 50% of the city is the university so I felt like there is not much to do.

The best place to visit was probably the Asia spa a very nice wellness. Also make sure to buy groceries at either Hofer (cheapest) or Lidl (the second cheapest) - no Billa or Spar (too expensive imo)

Having a car here was a HUGE advantage as going anywhere with public transport takes a lot of time. Places I visited were:

Mugel - quite a long hiking trip, but was worth it!
Leopoldsteiner See - nice walk around, you can rent a boat and take a ride
Frauenmauerhohle - hike to a walkable trough cave, amazing views!
Barenschutzklamm - harder hike with climbing ladders in a valley
Wasserlochklamm - amazing waterfalls! Hike wasn't that hard
Franz-Scheikl-Klettersteig - my first via ferrata trip. I rented a ferrata set at the university and had a great climb! Beginner friendly.

I was working at university, at the institute for structural and function ceramics. Everyone around here was very kind. Everything was explained to detail so every time I knew exactly what to do.

I was working on building a Convolutional Neural Network that was using SEM images for predictions of grains and boundaries of the ceramic materials (bearing balls). First part was manual segmentation of the images to binary state. This took the longest time because it needed to be perfect and the computations took a while. Next up was building the CNN in python using primarily TensorFlow library. I did not even think that I would make everything in time but it worked out so I am very glad about that.

Salary was very sufficient, I even managed to save some money. But if you're not careful you can spend the money very quickly.

English is definitely enough, everyone around here speak english fluently - even shopkeepers and random people on the street.

Accommodation was provided by IAESTE and I would say that it was very good. I stayed at the Schlagel und Eisen with other 2 students and 2 interns on a flat. Everyone had a separate room and there were 2 bathrooms and 2 toilets so that was sufficient. Manager of the accommodation even forgave me 2 weeks of the rental, so even tough I stayed for 6 weeks, I payed only 4. Huge thumbs up for that! Price was much lower than it stayed at the offer, so that was also pleasurable!

I met with IAESTE student right at the entrance of accommodation, she gave the keys and quickly explained some things, she was very kind. We had a few dinners together us IAESTE interns and other IAESTE LC Leoben students. I participated at the summer weekend called: Leoben challenge that consisted of BBQ, hiking, visiting local mountain zoo, riding karts, swimming at lake (was actually quite warm) having an all you can eat at an Asia restaurant + visiting the Asia Spa. I enjoyed it, everything went smoothly!!

I met other students practically every day as I was living with them haha. But other than that as the semester was starting at October there weren't many students at all.

You can go here either for a run, swim or hike. Or to a bar :D

IAESTE students cooked for us Käsespätzle which I really enjoyed. I also enjoyed some of the "wurstels" and schinckenschpecks.

I did not need to communicate with IAESTE Czech republic at all, but when we communicated it was via e-mail.

Be ready for some cardio activities as you'll be located at the starting point of the Alps. Be ready for some encounters with cows that roam local fields (when hiking). Be ready to go through some bureaucracy - registering at the town hall, getting an e-card (Austria insurance card)

Take an umbrella! It was exceptionally rainy this summer!

IMPORTANT!! TAKE AN EU SIZED PHOTO with you so you don't have to spend 20 EUR to take one at the city for the e-card.

I learned how the building of CNN and its predictions works. I had no experience with python until now, but I think that I learned some basics. As I will be doing my bachelors thesis on the same topic I would say that this internship was very very beneficial!

There weren't any problems, everything went smoothly.