Our „Finnish interns“ have now returned safely to Bitburg and are still raving about their unforgettable trip and the beautiful country they were able to get to know during the last two weeks. As a reminder: Five trainees and three employees of the Euro-BBW had traveled to our partner institution Luovi Vocational College in Oulu, Finland, for an internship abroad within the framework of Erasmus+. 

Our two gardening and landscaping trainees worked in the Botanical Garden of the University of Oulu, 5 km away. There they were allowed to design a real "bothnic beach" themselves and to free the broken stream on the "American hill" from overgrowing green growth, to re-cut bank edges and to install stones so that firstly the appearance looks natural and secondly the water no longer backs up and overflows.

Our prospective housekeeper learned about the differences in home maintenance in Finland and Germany. While in Finland the work is made as easy as possible, in Germany much more utensils are used. But also in Finland our trainee was allowed to operate and try out all kinds of machines and would be used everywhere. 

At the Euro-BBW, the focus of media design is on print. At Luovi College, our future media designer was given a taste of the video sector. He was particularly excited about the so-called "trick shot", in which the effect of a seamless transition between two scenes is important. For example, someone snaps their fingers and suddenly has sunglasses on. Shooting these videos was a lot of fun for our trainee.

When it comes to food preparation, Finnish and German cuisine are sometimes very similar, sometimes not at all. This is what our trainee chef discovered during his time in Oulu. While the same ingredients were used in the preparation of vegetables, potato casserole or carrot salad as it is done at the Euro-BBW, our trainee was surprised about the preparation of cucumber salad, which was dressed with a dressing of, among other things, ketchup, tomatoes and sambal oelek.  

The stay in Finland was very enriching for our trainees as well as for the supervisors. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Miia and all the other staff at Luovi Vocational College and Botanical Garden! Kiitos!

If you want to read the whole travel blog with lots of photos and funny stories, you can find it at https://finnland2022.tumblr.com/.