I am Szabolcs Olivér Jóna, a member of the Nagybajom 3rd group. I live in Nagybajom and study at the KSZC Eötvös Loránd Technical High School and Dormitory in Kaposvár. I am in my 12th year, studying as a mechanical manufacturing technician, and will be taking my final exams this school year. Thanks to the Erasmus+ program, we were taken to Greece to expand our professional internships. From our school, 50 students participated, each with different specialties. We were divided into 10-person teams, making 5 groups in total: mechanics, IT specialists, cadets, electricians, and security personnel.

Our journey started on October 23rd from the Lidl parking lot in Kaposvár at 4 a.m. We were so many that we barely fit on the bus. We passed through Serbia, Kosovo, and Macedonia, and arrived at the Greek border around 8 p.m. Since we didn’t travel on highways, the total travel time was 19 hours. We reached our accommodation at 11 p.m., staying in a 4-star hotel near Mount Olympus, just a few kilometers from the sandy beach, in Paralia Panteleimonos, at the San Panteleimon Hotel. Our rooms were for four people, and ours faced Mount Olympus, with a view of its peak.

The hotel had a pool, but it was colder than the sea, so we preferred to swim in the salty water. Since it’s a Mediterranean country, the weather wasn’t as bad as back home, but we still had to dress warmly in the mornings, as it was autumn there as well, even though the afternoons were hot. We had a buffet-style meal three times a day: breakfast included cereals, hams, cheeses, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, and boiled eggs, while lunch and dinner featured salads, rice, mashed potatoes, meats, and pasta dishes.

The best part was that the assigned tasks weren’t too difficult. In fact, many of us thought we would be working for 4-6 hours at a foreign company, but that wasn’t the case. Our group worked on programming Lego robots. Initially, I wasn’t too excited because, as a mechanical engineer, I didn’t expect to be dealing with Lego robots, but it turned out to be quite exciting. We programmed the robots for activities like sumo wrestling, Tic-Tac-Toe, and jousting, where two robots would compete against each other. There were four professional days in total. On the first professional day, we visited Joist Innovation Park, where we explored through VR glasses, learned about Alan Turing’s code-breaking machine, and then traveled back to the world of old boxy TVs and gaming consoles.

We also went on excursions in Greece, and we had some unforgettable experiences. We visited places that most people will not get the chance to see anytime soon.