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Matěj Zmítko, Pardubice, ročník 3

Faculty Faculty of electrical engineering and informatics
Field of study Information Technology
Field of internship Computer and Information Sciences
Specialization of Internship- - - - - - - - - -
Internship period (from - to) 30.9.2016 - 15.9.2017
Internship duration (weeks) 50
Transport (means, price) RegioJet bus (1500 CZK)
Insurance/Insurance company VZP + travel insurance (Allianz)
Visa/Work permit (yes/no) No
Price of Visa --
City of Internship Zobrazit místo na mapě  Switzerland, Brugg - Windisch
Internship reference number CH-2016-000059

About the country

Location of the place

Well located small town less than 25 minutes apart from Zurich, 35 minutes from Germany and around an hour from Basel and Bern (all by train).

City

The city itself is rather small but great as a starting point to explore the rest of a Switzerland. There are few good restaurants around, bars for students, cycling and skating tracks. Few small hills where you could go for a nice walk, two swimming pools, barbecue areas in the forests, beside the river, sport hall so actually everything for your needs.

Surroundings (possible trips, ...)

Thanks to an awesome railway network, which works perfectly in Switzerland so you can get by train literally to every spot you wish. I am an enthusiastic hiker and I travelled to every starting point by train without any difficulties. IAESTE organises many and many meeting, adventures so you really have many options how to express yourself. If you want you could even go to Germany or France, because its not so far apart. E.g. we went to Europapark to Germany. But if you want to stay in your city you can roam in the surrounding area and explore some really nice spots as well.

Employer

Employer

I worked within a group of cca 10 people for the institute of 4D Technologies. This Institute is divided into a few branches with a different specialisations (Heliophysics, virtual reality, information visualisation..). I worked in the field of interface and interaction design.

Work description

Graphic Design With Affinity For Digital Media, Interaction Design but also software development. My first project was about to continue on already ongoing project and I took a position of being a software developer dealing with technologies such as Node.js, JavaScript, SQLite3 and design in Sketch. Later on it turned more towards a designing direction and I got couple of projects to design (web design, UX/UI design, branding..) while still sticked to software development most of the times using JavaScript and D3.js. I was quite happy about this and it was exactly what I was looking for. As well I got a best colleagues I could so I was happy to go to work every morning.

Salary (sufficient for local conditions?)

CHF2000 way less than any Swiss person, but still quite enough to cover all the expenses, enough to travel within Switzerland and even abroad. I even saved something and bought a furniture to my flat. So no worries, would be fine to have more, but if you are able to save for a good things, you can afford them.

Language requirements

I think it was required to have at least B2 in English. Everybody speaks good English, but I would rather recommend to level up towards C1 to have life a bit easier and communication faster. I did not speak German, but I enrolled for intensive courses to be able to talk to the others in their native so at the end we sometimes switched to German.

Accommodation (price, who provided it)

As far as I was coming over with my girlfriend it was a big boundary in the beginning. IAESTE refused to find an accommodation for both of us or offered us to pay another CHF400 to find lodging while being still very sceptic about this situation. We had to take the situation to our hands and found an accommodation by ourselves. First flat we had was quite tiny 1.5 room for CHF970, but then we moved to bigger and much nicer one (2.5 room for CHF942 with deposit of CHF3500).

Social life

Meeting IAESTE members (pick-up at the airport, organized events...)

We came to the Brugg by train from Zurich bus station. Nobody really picked us so we found a directions with offline maps which worked well.

IAESTE organises perfect affordable events, but we did most of our tours either with my colleagues or only two of us. Especially summer hiking events are really lovely in nice locations for good prices! I can recommend them.

Meeting other foreign students

I met few foreign students working for the same Institute and one was even through IAESTE just as I was.

Sport and culture

There are many sport possibilities you can do and FHNW offers really good and cheap ways to do sports and some of them even extraordinary. What I did was gym, swimming, roller skating, cycling, skiing, kayaking and canoeing (thats actually really nice mainly in Luzern lake its really worth to do, one of our favourite!). We went few times to the cinema, to the summer open-air cinema in Zurich, to Fasnacht, Luzern festival, Baden festival, we visited a concert in Zurich, open-air festival in Birrfeld at the airport. There are limitless options how to enjoy a life.

Food, local specialties

Apart from Fondue and Raclette which are considered as a national delicates (I like it, but nothing really amazing) there are more or less standard menus we know in Czech Republic. At the campus we had a menza which was slightly cheaper than the rest. Restaurants are very pricey and I rarely visited them.

Other information

Possibilites to communicate with the Czech Republic

We bought an internet on go with a modem to our flat for CHF39 per month so we could take it anywhere and anytime. Its 2017 so you have tons of ways to reach your family or anyone.

Recommendations for students who will go to the same place

As soon as possible get Halbtax and Gleis 7 (if you are under 26). It saves you a lots of money -> you get a 50% reduction for SBB trains and with Gleis 7 you can travel within Switzerland for free after 19 oclock. Absolutely worth to invest not so much money. Learn a bit of German, because locals like it. Join IAESTE trips and meet really nice people.

What not to forget with you

Bring a bunch of money before your first wages. Bring good hiking shoes, tent and sleeping bag if you love to explore mountains and nature and wish to see sunset/sunrise in the mountains. Good mood and smile in every time!

Benefits of the internship

I met many really nice and easy going people not afraid to help in every situation and I can say that they became to be my close friends for a long period of time. Many of them were my colleagues I have been working with every day. I gained lots of experiences throughout my internship concerning my design and developing skills which are and will be a key points in my future.

Cooperation with IAESTE in the foreign country

I have to be honest that I cannot give a good feedback for what happened before we came here. One more person such a big problem trying to almost even convince us to not come or come separately. I do not see the point to expose someone to this amount of stress before my internship started. It did not help to make things easier at all. I understand that a contract is for one person including accommodation, but next time a bit more humanity would help. I got an emails that find an accommodation is almost impossible and we cannot be successful at any point and afterwards we even moved to a bigger flat is I think enough to refute such a claim. Only a suggestions where to look and way more stress would be definitely enough to help.

At the end it was my supervisor and one of my colleague who gave us a biggest favour and help us to solve that situation, but IAESTE distanced themselves.

Overall experience with IAESTE

Apart from what I described above I was satisfied with events and meetings they did. IAESTE changed my life, because they offer many countries and experiences essentially in the whole world, but I had to help myself to solve many things by myself.

Student's website

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Employer's webiste

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Other useful links

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Other comments

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