From August 8 till September 2, 2011 I spent an internship at the company Gea Denco in England. Gea Denco is specialized in constructing air conditioning units. I gained much important experience and great memories in those 4 weeks. On August 6, 2011 I flew from Munich via Amsterdam to Birmingham, where a taxi driver picked me up and gave me a lift to Hereford, the location of the company. Jenny Tipton, my land lady welcomed me politely and introduced me to the Upper-Austrian Tobias Kloihofer. He was on a similar internship at the same company and also stayed at Jenny’s. Just the same day, they showed me the 55,000 inhabitant-city of Hereford.
On August 8, Monday, I had my first work day. The manager of the technical department, Colin Badham introduced me to all the employees and led me around in the factory. When walking around, I realized how friendly the workers were. While all the technical and theoretical works were done in the office, the air conditioning units and other components were built in the workshop, about 200 m away from the office.
My first week I spent in the workshop, watching and helping at all different production steps. In week 2 and 3 I had to do more theoretical work. Often on Monday and Tuesday I worked with a recently-graduated engineer. At the “test chamber” we checked all the air conditioning units, if they were working the way they were supposed to, e.g. providing their cooling power or switching the humidifier.
Many days I also spent at the office, where I had my own work desk. There I got used to the 3D-design program Autodesk Inventor. First I made a test object, but later I was allowed to create some rivets, sheet metal constructions and a high-pressure switch. After hard weeks of work, Jenny, Tobias and I always were looking forward to the weekends. On the first weekend Tobias and I went to London by bus. We travelled through the city with a sight-seeing bus, this way we gained a little expression of the city. On the second weekend Tobias and I went to another big city: Birmingham. There we watched the football match Aston Villa vs. Blackburn, after we had a little walk through the centre of the city. We also spent a lot of time in the centre of Hereford. We got to know a lot of people and also created some contacts with foreigners in Hereford, when we went out.
During the 4 weeks in England I not only improved my technical skills, but also my English knowledge and fluency got much better. The personal experience I gained while staying in another country is also worth being mentioned. Therefore I want to thank all the people, who made this internship for me possible, in particular McCloskey and Colin Badham from Gea Denco, Professor Weissensteiner from the HTL Vöcklabruck and the IFA. I am very glad that I was offered this chance and can really recommend it to future pupils of the HTL, wanting to go abroad.