Nottingham is a city in East Midlands. The closest airport is East Middlands. The National Express provides sufficient connection with almost all parts of GB.

Everyone imagine England as a country where rains very often. Nevertheless, during my stay there I got soaked only twice. It was unusual warm and dry summer.

Nottingham is known for Robin Hood. The city centre is quite small and it is easy to get oriented.
There are 2 universities. In the city centre there is Nottingham Trent University, the University of Nottingham is about 10 minutes by bus far from the city centre.

Nottingham itself offers many interesting places worth visiting. My favourite place was Wollaton Deer Park. The deer are very tame and you can practically touch them.

Nottingham is a City of Caves. I visited the complex accessible from Broad Marsh shopping centre. There is an amazing guided exhibition in Galleries of Justice. Visitors are drawn into the 19th century trial and than put into prison.
George Green, the famous mathematician, was born in Nottingham. Many places are called after him and there is a Green windmill which was built by mathematician´s father.
Newstead Abbey, known for one of its residents Lord Byron, is only 8 miles from Nottingham. There is a cycle trail from Nottingham to Newstead Abbey.

I was employed in School of Physics and Astronomy. I was among academic society. Everyone was very friendly and willing to help me anytime. In my future life I would like to work in such a nice place.

The main task of my internship was Monte Carlo (MC) simulation of Raman spectroscopy in foams. First two weeks were dedicated to study the physical background of the Raman spectroscopy. After that I started editting the non-working MC scripts which were given to me. I repaired and rewrote the code and produced sufficient results. For simulation I used Octave which is free and its syntax is similar to Matlab one. All in all, I improved my programing skills and discovered field of physics which I did not know before.

My salary was 234,50 GBP/week. The rent was 80 GBP/week. My estimation of cost of food per week is 70 GBP. For me the salary was sufficient.

Excellent English was required.

I had to arrange my accommodation by myself. I rented a room via spareroom.com in a family house 7 km far from university. I went to work by bike which my housemate borrowed me. The cost of living was £80/week, all bills, breakfast and laundry included.

At that time, I was the only IAESTE trainee in Nottingham and there were no social programme organized by local committee. However, I attended a weekend in Cardiff organized by Iaeste Wales which was amazing.

I did my internship during summer so the campus was quiet because students were on their holiday. However, I met a few foreign students on my trips accross England and also I shared the house with other students.

English people love sport a lot. The cycle trails are almost everywhere. In parks there are free workout facilities.

English people are not used to cooking their food. They prefer ready-made food just to heat in the oven. The famous fish&chips are the best at the coast.
For my lunch I usually bought a deal meal = main meal+drink+snack for 3.29 GBP in a university store. At home I cooked my dinner.

Without any problems. I had a good internet connection and at school I used eduroam. Be aware, you must activate your eduroam account at your own university.

Borrow a bike!
It is not necessary to buy Robin Hood card for public transport. You can pay straightly to the bus-driver but you need to have cash.
Be aware there are no buses from midnight till 5am going towards the city centre. If you are more than one you can hire a taxi. You can ask for the price of taxi in advance by email.

The most important things are an ID and credit cards. Everything else you can buy.

Firstly, I had a great work experience which looks stunning in my CV. I learned new parts of Physics and improved professional skills.
Also my English is much better now.
During weekends I travelled a lot. I visited a lot of places in GB (Oxford, Cardiff, Peak District,...).

I cooperated only with the IAESTE Wales which organized a weekend in Cardiff for trainees.