On an International Internship in the UK: Learning by Doing

Florian Tscherry and Karl David Binderberger, students at HTL Ried and HTL Braunau, respectively, spent four weeks in August on an international internship at our subsidiary TRIALS in southern England. The internship was organized and funded by WINTERSTEIGER. The TRIALS team, consisting of 19 employees, supplies and supports seed breeders and produces small-batch production runs for WINTERSTEIGER Seedmech.

As early as the second week, the two students were able to accompany the service technicians on visits to customers. “You learn a lot, especially when it comes to language skills. We came into contact with a lot of people, and everything was conducted entirely in English,” reports Karl David Binderberger. They had learned the technical vocabulary the week before in the workshop while repairing combines and seeders—it doesn’t get any more hands-on than that. Florian Tscherry on the collaboration: “Everyone on the team was very helpful, and we could ask questions at any time. Very quickly, our colleagues trusted us to handle the simpler assembly tasks.”

Big Ben and the London Eye

The two students were housed in an apartment in the town of Braintree—with excellent train connections to London. So they went sightseeing on the weekends. Household chores ran like clockwork, and Florian and Karl handled the laundry, cleaning, and cooking together. On the way to work, they’d discuss dinner plans, and whoever got home first would start cooking. All in all, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the teens, and their take on it: “We’d do it again in a heartbeat!”