Report: An Austrian internship, Summer 2021
During the summer of 2021, Biology undergraduate James Malone travelled to Vienna, Austria to take part in an internship program at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria involving roughly 40 other young people, interested in interdisciplinary research, from all over the world.
This experience hugely added to my skills as someone who aspires to a career in biological research, but also transformed me on a personal level. Never before had I lived by myself in a foreign country and had the opportunity to socialise with a range of people from such different backgrounds.
The Internship was funded by the OeAD, but this only covered the basic costs of living. Given the unique opportunity of living in this part of Europe, I wanted to take full advantage of the social and cultural experiences available to me. The extra funding from the Gerry Grimstone Travel Award made this possible.
Vienna’s central location made it possible to travel to many cities I had never visited before. Along with other interns and friends I knew from Europe, I visited Linz, Salzburg, Budapest and Prague. In both Salzburg and Prague, I stayed for multiple days, in a youth hostel in the former and with a friend in the latter, giving me more time to explore. We spent our time walking around the cities and visiting museums and other attractions. In Budapest I got a chance to look around the Hungarian Parliament and see the crown jewels, as well as sampling the traditional goulash. I took advantage of the vibrant classical music scene in this corner of Europe, by attending operas in Prague and Vienna and a concert in Salzburg. In Prague, we managed to book seats at a premiere of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, in the very theatre where it first premiered in 1787. In Salzburg, we attended a piano recital by Evgeny Kissin, as part of the famous Salzburg Festival. In Vienna, we went to a production of Puccini’s Tosca by the Vienna State Opera which, despite not being able to see much of the stage from my seat, I thoroughly enjoyed.
Being in a group of interns all roughly around my age meant there were lots of opportunities to socialise in Vienna. On the weekends, we enjoyed hiking in the surrounding hills, swimming in the Danube, relaxing in cafes, and by night we had fun in various bars and clubs. On one occasion, the OeAD organised a hiking trip for many of the interns to a mountain nearby Vienna, called Schneeberg. Here, I got an opportunity to meet people from other institutions who were also in receipt of funding from the OeAD. Over the course of the internship, through activities like those I’ve described above, I became good friends with several of the interns, who I am still in contact with and hope to meet again when we are both in the same country.
The experience of summer 2021 was unforgettable, not just because of the research project I worked on, but also because of my experiences travelling, meeting other interns and experiencing the many facets of foreign cultures. These additional experiences were only possible because of the generous funding from the Gerry Grimstone Travel Award, for which I will always be extremely grateful.