Alicante, 25th August 2018. “The only thing I regret is not having stayed there even longer” is the conclusion at the end of Nico-las’ report on his work placement. After a somewhat exciting odyssey after the arrival at the airport in Alicante Nicolas soon managed better and better to communicate with his host family and at his work placement, a café in Alicante. He liked working in the café very much, as he got to know people from a lot of countries and could form some friendships. At the end of his work placement he even discussed the Spanish language policy, the separatist movement and the situation in Columbia with his host family.

Saint-Quentin, 18th July 2018. 18-year-old Franziska from Kaiserslautern could do her four-week work placement in three different positions in the northern French Saint-Quentin. She was met with a lot of friendliness every-where! In the first two weeks she was in the ESPACE CITOYEN, where she was allowed to partici-pate in the arrangement of a free time programme for the older and the younger generation. At the so-called “marché de proximité” the assistants accompany older people on walks through the City or in the nature and talk to them. An “après-midi jeux” is a games afternoon organised for younger or older people. In the third week she was at ALLO MAIRIE, a place to go for citizens who have a problem. Not only in the office, but also at lunch she had the chance to talk to her very nice colleagues: “this was always very funny”. She mostly helped in the office and twice she was al-lowed to accompany a colleague when he went to people and took photos of their problems.
She spent the last week of her work placement with the DIRECTION DU PATRIMOINE, which organ-ises exhibitions and festivals. She immediately felt at ease here, too, and by the way got to know the sights of the city (among others basilica, town hall, souterrains, museum of butterflies).
At the end of her report on her work placement Franziska writes: “Whoever wants to do a work placement abroad and is not sure: I can only recommend it. My language is much better now and it helped me on in my life.”

Paris, 15th July 2018. After a nine-hour coach ride Charlotte arrived in Paris, where she had found a two-week work placement in the literature agency “Anna Jarota Agency”. In her report on her work placement  she describes the tasks of such an agency: “standing in for rights of authors and mediating between international authors and French publishers”. Charlotte’s tasks were extraordinarily diverse. For the sale of books she wrote so-called “argus”, for example, sorted data sets, read books, manuscripts and contracts, looked for books on shelves, managed check lists, etc. From her flat in the 11th arrondissement she had a dreamlike view on the Eiffel Tower. After work she often went for a walk or sat by the Seine. In conclusion Charlotte writes: “All in all, I can say that I had two very great weeks in Paris giving me a much better understanding of the city and the French working life”.

Marseille, 14th July 2018. In his work placement with the company “Atout Visa” in Marseille, which concerns itself with applying for visa for individuals and groups, Pascal could get an “exciting insight into the working world”. He worked on applications for visa for different countries like Russia and India, for example. The days when he was allowed to accompany his boss to the consulates of the Ivory Coast, of Algeria and China were especially exciting. At the end of his report he is pleased to assert that on the one hand he could collect valuable job-related experiences and on the other hand could also very much improve his knowledge of French.