Young scientists abroad: moving experience, by Francesca Paoletti, Italy to Germany

...the new working environment, the new techniques you learn, the new collegues you meet.

I present the personal feelings of my experience in Halle (Saale) (Germany) in frame of an EMBO short-term fellowship. The focus is on the social and cultural aspects of the mobility experience, in particular of the enrichment coming from a mobility experience where you meet a different culture and you face new problems and new challenges. Of course an important aspect is the one of the new working environment, the new techniques you learn, the new collegues you meet. The experience is presented with the written organization of a scientific article.

Introduction

Mobility means lots of things for a scientist; in my case it was a working time during the PhD in the group of Dr. Elisabeth Schwarz, in the laboratory of Protein Biotechnology in Halle (Saale) (Germany), thanks to an EMBO short-term fellowship.

Materials and methods

-Laboratory: Institute for Biotechnology at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Very well equipped laboratory expecially for protein chemistry.
-Housing: Guesthouse of the University.
-Culture: One of the most important regions for German culture, with important towns for the history of music, literature, science.
-Transportations: Excellent public service with tram and bus. Very good connections by train to the most important neighbouring towns.
-Money: The Euro, like in Italy: great to change country and keep the same money!

Results

- Culture. Living in a foreign country is an important experience for your work as well as for your private life, because you face with a different way of living and this helps you in opening your mind. The funny thing when you go abroad is that in this case it’s you to be the foreigner: for me it was really interesting to stay “on the other side”. I had for example to deal with the fact that I was not talking Italian and that I had some different “everyday usages”. A simple difference you face is the food: it was really interesting to taste different foods (I learned to love pork meat and potatoes as much as my beloved pasta!) and to learn how to cook them. Concerning the cultural exchange, an interesting experience has been living in the guesthouse, where I met people from all over the world, from the Croatian medical doctor to the Ukranian literature researcher, from the Japanese biologist to the French one. And we could share our personal experiences in terms of work, scientific ideas, political events in our countries, our different social habits.

- Language and everyday’s life. You can survive more or less everywhere if you speak English, but it’s not bad if you can also communicate in the language of the country where you are travelling. I was lucky to speak German and therefore I enojed my time even more: it was nice to be able to communicate almost with everybody (possibly, it has been fun for German people to hear me talking German...!), and to learn more of the language. It was nice to get in contact with the “everyday life” in Halle and eventually I was really happy to feel myself home in a foreign country!

- New working environment. And what about working in a new laboratory? I was personally very excited: I think you can always learn a lot in a different working environement. For example I had the chance to learn various techniques on protein biotechnology in the most appropriate way, since I was in one of the places where they are most advanced; I got experience and I can teach what I learned, coming back in my home lab. Moreover I had the chance to exchange my experience with new collegues, and therefore to learn by different approaches, for example in proceeding to an experiment. Of course, I could present my work, and get experience in presenting some different topic to an audience that was not familiar to it, and to listen to the presentations of other students or more experienced scientists and to follow interesting seminars.
For me the time in the lab in Halle was really a great experience and I felt lucky as a PhD student to have the chance of living there! I met nice collegues and everybody was happy to help me in the things I could need, both to feel home in the guesthouse (like putting questions in German to the house-master or explaining where I could go shopping...!) and to feel home in the lab. I could get my spaces to work and I always could ask anybody to help me in teaching the use of and instrument or the best way to make an experiment. I keep contacts with the collegues of the lab in Halle: we still work on the same topic and exchange our results, improving our research!

- Non-working notes: although time is running fast when you are abroad, you can always find some free time to explore also the country where you are. For me this was quite easy, since the german region where Halle is located is really “lucky”. I could enjoy concerts in Leipzig - cradle of european music, where J.S. Bach was “Kantor” and F. Mendelssohn orchestra director; refresh german literature in Weimar visiting the homes of J.W. Goethe and F. Schiller; take a look at the Zeiss Planetarium in Jena and see the famous University where lots of personality of european culture taught; breathe the international air in the streets of Berlin. And of course walk in the streets of Halle where G.F. Händel was born!

Discussion

Every time you leave your home, it’s somehow not easy, because you have to leave your “normal safe life”. But when you overcome the initial difficulties of facing a new situation (for example to learn a new language, to live in a new environment, to change your friends, to be “alone”) then you can enjoy all the beauty of making a new experience.

Conclusion

Even when the time abroad is gone, I’m sure I will continue living the benefits of this experience. At the beginning I was open to everything I could get and maybe this was the correct attitude, since I was really earning the best from this experience!
Now I’m back home, but if somebody asks me if would like to go back there or somewhere else, I have no doubt: I would leave again! During my time in Halle I grew as a “young scientist” and I came back home sure that I would like to continue doing science, even if it’s sometimes hard, but at the end my life is surely more interesting!

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