Roger Duthie
Treasurer Edinburgh IAESTE local committee
On my IAESTE exchange I visited what was traditionally a mining town in the mountains of Austria. Leoben has less residents than my university, though it has one of the best technical universities in Austria, originally specialising in mining technologies they allow students to study courses in such things as metallurgy, petroleum engineering, plastics technology, and geosciences. Though you could not study your undergraduate degree in physics at this university, there was a small physics department with which I was associated. My charge was to aid a mature PhD student in the day-to-day running of an AFM system, as he wished to write his thesis and gain his doctorate. AFM is the acronym for atomic force microscope, a device which may probe the surface of a material to the nano scale - you may tune the instrument to view literally hundreds of atoms in resolution. I am now fully qualified to use such a device. Also the experience of working in such a heavily scientific environment with my supervisor and his research group alongside a couple of masters students, and some post-doctorate staff including the research group head (a professor of some repute), renewed my zeal for the subject I had chosen to study as my first degree. I am now much more likely to look for research work as I graduate this year -and I feel that I am more likely to achieve this, with the premier-rate experience I now possess
Aside from the work, Austria really surprised me as a location. I didn't really know what to expect (mountains? I wasn't disappointed in this respect), and I didn't have any useful German language before accepting the placement from IAESTE. I have now visited some of the most spectacular locations in Europe, and have some extra rudimentary language skills - I even decided I could live in Wien (Vienna - photographed: a lovely day I have to admit!) as the place seemed so welcoming to me. At the weekends we visited some of Austria's highlights: Wien, Graz (second biggest town - I want to visit here again due to the amazing atmosphere), Halstatt (a small salt mining town in the remote highlands - you have to get there from the train station by boat, across a lake surrounded on all sides by mountains), Innsbruck (home of Swarovski) and also the opportunity arose to visit Hungary and Salzburg, though I was doing so much that I wanted a couple of days of just to do nothing, and didn't visit the latter places.
The local committee were really keen to make you feel at home. In Austria, the entire IAESTE organisation and running is done by students. More than once a week, we would have a BBQ with our weekly beer budget put to very good use. As Leoben was only a small place there were only a few places to go at night, though we would have international parties at the main accommodation site. Each week we would have another student cook a traditional meal of their country of patronage (photographed). I had to cook a haggis from scratch!
All in all this was more than just a pleasant or useful exchange traineeship, I have now made so many more new friends, and open my horizons to so much more widely. I do hope that if you are taking the opportunity to go on placement with the IAESTE you enjoy your time as much as I did in Austria.
