Meet Maxime, an IT engineering student from France, who did his Erasmus+ traineeship in Slovakia as a Junior web developer. Maxime spent 5 months in Slovakia and below you can read what he has to say about his traineeship experience.

1, How did your story first begin and why did you decide to take an Erasmus+ internship in Slovakia?

Working in an internship abroad is mandatory in my school and at first, I wanted to do one in Ireland because it was an English speaking country and I already liked the country after visiting there for a week a few years ago. However, after no answers from there I decided to look elsewhere, and I did find a link to the website of Placement Slovakia. After reading what the website was about, I was interested in what the companies were offering, and the support Placement Slovakia would provide so I applied for several of the internships.
 
2, Can you tell what responsibilities the company gave you at work?

I was tasked with the development of different modules and a I also participated in the creation of a website.
 
3, What skills did you improve the most during your traineeship?
 
The skills I improved the most were all related to development with for example PHP, JavaScript or jQuery. But I also learned how to be a better programmer and I improved my skills in English.

4, What were your expectations and were they met?

I was afraid of being not welcome or left alone in the company, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was wrong. I felt welcome when I first started working there and my boss was always there when I had a problem.
 
5, Were there any tasks given to you that you had no idea how to complete? If so, how did you solve it?

There were a few tasks I had difficulty to complete but after seeking help from my boss and looking through documentation I could solve my problems.
 
6, How did you find out about our programme and how would you evaluate our assistance provided during your period here?

I first learned about the programme thanks to an email from one of my school professors. I really liked the help the and assistance Placement Slovakia provided, either before the internship started or during when we had problem with the flat.

7, Do you have any suggestions or improvements to our placement programme?

Not really, I don’t have any complain about the placement programme, so I don’t really have suggestions.
 
8, What do you think of the life-style in Slovakia?

It’s honestly a pretty nice place to live. I’m not fond of living in big city but I found that Bratislava was nice place to live in.

9, What did you find as the most different from your usual environment, country? Was there any culture shock?
 
Beside the weather and language there were not much “shocking” differences between Slovakia and France.

10, What did you like the best here in Slovakia?
 
The food here is very nice, I had the opportunity to eat at a restaurant and I truly liked what there was to try.

11, Did you have any work or social difficulties during your stay in Slovakia? If so, how did you solve them?

The biggest social difficulty I had was when it came to the language. Some people don’t or talk very little English, so it was sometimes hard to make myself understood. The easiest way to solve that were to either try speaking to someone else or make myself understand with some translations on my phone.

12, Did you have enough time to travel and explore Slovakia and neighbouring countries? Which places did you visit and what left the biggest impact on you?

While in Slovakia I stayed mostly in Bratislava, but I did visit Prague and the biggest thing that I remember from that trip was the common things the 2 countries shared with each other, especially the language.
 
13, Which moment of your stay in Slovakia has been the most memorable for you?

I think it’s when it started to snow. I don’t see much of it where I live in France so seeing so much was really surprising.
 
14, What are your future plans after finishing the internship?

After the internship I will come back to France to my year and half of studies and after that I will quit being a student and start to work for real.
 
15, Is there anything you would like to say to students still deciding whether or not to do an internship in Slovakia?

That they should really come here. I was in contact with my classmates also doing internship in different foreign countries and from their feedback, I realised that coming here was the best choice I could have made.