The first week...

Hello everyone! Here I will write my new blog... Blog about my work placement. 

But first, I want to say something about the country I am doing internship in.. This country is Belgium. It is not the first time I am here, when I was here for the first time I found out that Belgium is very beautiful, especially the capital of this country - Brussels. Brussels is the most beautiful city I have ever seen; it looks like a luxury city. Not everyone can understand the beauty of Belgian architecture, there are golden elements in almost every building. Actually there is a lot to say about this country and city. But this is not the point of this blog. Let's move to the place I live in.

The place I live in, is some kind of a student house, here are a lot of students, who came to Brussels for their minor. However, this is not the main thing I wanted to say about this student house. As you all may know, Brussels is mainly French speaking city, but I was really surprised when I met people from different countries, who also speaks French very well. I didn't know that French is so common. Here I met people from Germany, Italy, Spain, Scotland, Ireland, Vietnam and Canada and they all can speak French. This gave me a motivation to learn French, just to understand French speaking people and I think I have really good opportunity to do it. I am thinking about taking French courses. So I think "Just do it" suits here really good. 

This is the view from the student house.

And finally, - My work placement. My University in the Netherlands requires to do the work placement for one semester, doesn't matter where, everyone could choose the country, where they wanted to go, but the most important part, work placement has to be connected with the study course - "Business and Management Studies". 

It took me a long time to find a work placement. I think it requires a lot of effort to find something and to get accepted. So starting from the end of March and until the end of May I was mailing  companies and everything I got, was "Sorry, we have applicants that better match our requirements". It was disappointing. 

Tech Tour is the first company that asked me for interview and it was in the beginning of April. After the interview they said that they will contact me within two weeks, after two weeks I didn't receive anything from them. So I was trying to find something else. One company in Malta accepted me, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to go there, so I sent an email to Tech Tour and asked about the result. I got the surprise two days after I sent the email... They called me and said that I am accepted and I can come to Brussels and start my internship on 10th of September. I was really happy, because I didn't want to go somewhere far away from the Netherlands and I really liked Brussels from the very first visit.

I didn't know what to expect from the first day of my internship. I came to the office on 10th of September, the woman who interviewed me welcomed me and showed the office. I also met my fellow colleagues I will work with during the upcoming 5 months and previous intern, who helped me a lot first week. 

Tech Tour has offices in Brussels, Bulgaria and Switzerland, also people in Great Britain and Denmark. Tech Tour realizes its goal by organizing and coordinating events (mainly in Europe) that provide a platform for interactions between leading entrepreneurs, investors and industry players. Tech Tour's events bring together the entire technology ecosystem of local and global players. So as you can see Tech Tour is the event company and I will be responsible for two events. I found out that I will need to create webpages for this events, I have never done it before, as well as contacting startup companies, investors, coaches and partners to invite them to the events. 

Benelux Venture Forum(BVF) this will be the first event I will work on, because this event will take place on 13-14 of November, so there is not a lot of time left. The events usually take place somewhere in Europe and BVF will take place in the Netherlands. I will have to travel, I will be able to meet new people, new businesses, discover how the startups present themselves, and maybe in the future I will become a client of Tech Tour, not an intern. Maybe they will help me to find the investors if I will need them.

The view from work placement building.

The second event I will work on is European Venture Contest Final, the event which brings all the winners from the 2018 events. The 12th edition of the European Venture Contest Final - Europe's leading network and investment event for high-growth technological start-ups, venture capital investors and technological corporations - is taking place on 10-11 December 2018 in Düsseldorf. It offers an incredible opportunity for entrepreneurs to grow their businesses across borders and engage directly with Europe’s most active investors. I will elaborate more on these two events more next week.

This is my first week, but I already got a lot to do. I have so much information and I need to understand a lot, but I am happy that all the people in this company can help me, doesn't matter who I ask; it can be people from Brussels, Bulgaria or Switzerland, they all will help. 

The previous intern helped me, but only the first week; my first week was her last week, so now I will work all by myself. I hope that everything will be fine and I will get everything I need, the most important I will get new experience, broaden my network, meet new people, experience new culture and improve myself. 

This week post is just a preview of everything I went through the first week in Brussels. Next week I will post more about the office and my work. I will talk about the events more as well as I will share with you what are my main tasks. Hope you enjoyed it.

I decided that every week I will post one interesting fact about the country, so you all will get an overview of Belgium culture.

This week fact is:

Manneken Pis is the best-known symbol of the people of Brussels. It also embodies their sense of humour  and their independence of mind. 

But did you know that there is a girl as well?

Jeanneke Pis is a modern fountain and statue in Brussels, which was intended to form a counterpoint to the city's Manneken Pis, south of the Grand Place.