Internship in Tartu during pandemic: it is you extremely fulfilling, but you must go out of your comfort zone

"Time in Estonia with Erasmus + internship was extremely fulfilling, but to have that kind of experience you must go out of your comfort zone."

It is hard to describe my internship in Tartu, but it's easy to say what it wasn’t which is boring.

My working part of the internship took place in a newly built Tartu university faculty for mathematics and computer science or we can call it ‘Delta centre’. It was interesting to work here, everything looked brand new and beautiful I was feeling that I was a part of something bigger. My main working space took place in a room called ‘sandbox’, it was a chill place to work and hang out, the most important think there was the kitchen with free delicious coffee and tea. My main work was easy for a professional but hard for an amateur, it was adding a button to a web app and use a specific library to open a file. It was hard because I didn’t know the language nor framework that the web app was built upon so most of my time there was studying. Of course, I felt lost a couple of times, but weekly supervisor and mentor visits helped me overcome my hurdles. My supervisor was a Lithuanian professor that gave a lot of practical advices and someone to talk to with my mother tongue.

My other and more interesting part of internship took place all around Estonia. My Estonian roommate was a huge traveller, history buff, active and generally friendly person. He used to travel abroad for the summer but because of the Covid-19 situation he couldn’t, so he travelled a lot around Estonia and because of our good terms I travelled with him too. It was effortless and cheap to travel in Estonia. Regional busses that goes around the main cities are free, well established train connections cost pennies. I visited places like Pärnu, Peipsi lake, Valga, Narva, Otepää, Rakvere and tons of other places. I went kiiking, swam in the sea a million times in 4 different places, celebrated midsummer (arguably the most important celebration in Estonia), to Tartu film festival, to astronomy camp and of course I have gone to many saunas. I have met a lot of friendly people here, and I hope I will keep in contact with them after my time here.

ON THE SEA MOLE IN PÄRNU

Time in Estonia with Erasmus + internship was extremely fulfilling, but to have that kind of experience you must go out of your comfort zone. Working part of the internship is not all, to have the full experience you must introduce yourself to places culture, history, nature and people. I have done exactly that and I happy with my choice to come here.

WAVING TO RUSSIANS FROM NARVA CASTLE