Welcome to my last blog about learning log from one month abroad in Northern Ireland
Welcome to my last blog about the things I learned during my Erasmus traineeship in Belfast – my learning log
I have completed an Erasmus placement abroad for one month in Belfast at the company: Watson & Co Chartered Marketing founded by Chartered Marketer: Christine Watson. Christine also hosts trainingmatchmaker.com to inspire learning.
My workplace was at the Belfast Central Library  at the 6nd floor ‘creative space’. Here we had a beautiful view over the city. We also worked from other different libraries, hotel lobbies, enterprise hubs and coffee shops. My favourite was the Mac Cafe and the Lisburn Road, Belfast Library . I found it to be a very pleasant atmosphere to work in both of these places especially. We also worked from Newcastle, from Bangor and from other nice places too.
 

Working at the Mac Cafe which is next to the Belfast Central Library.

Working at the Lisburn City Library with the best Coffee from Roasty Toasty

Working at the Lisburn road, Belfast Library with the best Coffee from Roasty Toasty.

   
 
 
 
I had completed my traineeship together with Michelle, she is also from Austria/Upper Austria. She is such a friendly and brilliant girl. On our Erasmus journey to Northern Ireland, we first met at the Dublin airport. She is doing an apprenticeship as an industrial clerk.

My work buddy Michelle

She is from Upper Austria.

 
   
 
 
 
 The English Language
The four weeks in an English-speaking country have boosted my confidence in using English – both written and verbal. Writing blogs has also helped me a lot with my written english.
The locals in Northern Ireland speak pretty fast and they have their own dialect too!
I learned some Northern Irish colloquialisms, such as “what’s the craic,” which means ‘how are you, a ‘female sheep’, is called ewe but some locals pronounce this ‘yeoww’, ‘clammy’ which means ‘hot’, and many more phrases.
WordPress
WordPress (also known as WP or WordPress.org) is a web content management system. It was originally developed as a blog publishing tool, but has evolved to support the publishing of other web content, including more traditional websites, mailing lists and Internet forums, media galleries, membership sites, learning management systems, and online stores. On the placement I learned how to post a blog on a website and how to edit. It is very easy and you can also have a preview before you push publish. You can also easily add a link or photos. Here I also learned the meaning of “ALT text”. You should always give a short summary in the “ALT text” when uploading a photo or other image because for blind people it is the descriptions that they hear.
Blogging Skills
The biggest part of my Erasmus placement was to write different blogs about clients of Watson & Co Chartered Marketing  or about different events. At the beginning it was very hard for me to write a blog which made sense and was grammatically correct. Christine helped me here a lot to formulate it right she also gave me some tips and so it became much easier for me to write a blog
Here I also implemented my learning from the apple courses . You can read all my other blogs on the website Blog – TrainingMatchMaker.

Me posting my second blog.

   
 
 
 
 
 Canva
Canva is a free programme that allows you to create graphics, presentations, invitations, flyers, posters, social media posts, maps, charts, and many other graphic works. You have the option to use Canva for free or to use Canva as a paid monthly upgrade. Michelle and I were allowed to design different Facebook covers for different clients of Christine . We also designed Reel end frames on Canva and a blog cover as well as graphic squares/tiles for Instagram.
Today at Apple
We attended different apple courses which were free and available during our time on placement at the Apple store in Victoria Square shopping Centre in Belfast City Centre. I found out about these learning opportunities through my placement host and trainer Christine Watson who set up Trainingmatchmaker.com to curate and publish course opportunities like these to inspire people to learn and to keep learning.
I learned many new things about my iPhone camera and I discovered some functions that I didn’t know existed, we also learned about the video function.
My Today at Apple course choice that I attended during my time in Belfast were:
 

Picture from today at Apple course.

Insight at the course Framing Architecture.

       
 
 
 
 
 
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social network for maintaining existing business contacts and making new business connections. Due to my apprenticeship as an office clerk, I am currently working in the HR department and was therefore able to acquire the knowledge before my internship and already had some knowledge about the app LinkedIn. Through my stay at the Watson and Co. Chartered Marketing , I was able to expand my knowledge even further and made many new friends which are now my connections on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn here – Romana Schöser.
Instagram and Reels
I created my own Instagram account to document my time in NI – you are welcome to follow me and have a look back through my posts about my time on the Erasmus programme. @Romana_in_belfast 
I microblogged about our different work places because our mentor Christine always made sure that we saw a lot of NI and so we could work very flexibly from different libraries or coffee shops and also from hotel lobbies and enterprise hubs. That was so nice and I am so blessed that we could see so much from the city, across the city and beyond it.
We also learned from Christine  how to make an Instagram Reel easily in 3 minutes. I really loved to make such easy Reels using the ‘Use template’ cheat!
Irish Culture
My Erasmus placement Watson & Co Chartered Marketing and Trainingmatchmaker.com have a lot of customers in different parts of the city and across Northern Ireland so I got to visit many places also while I was working – I took the free 45-minute tour of Belfast City Hall – Christine had delivered WorldHost training to one of the tour guides at Belfast City Hall in the past.  
 
 

Belfast City Hall

Belfast City Hall tour

 
 
 
 
    My top places to visit and things to see in Northern Ireland are:
 
 
 

Bangor

Portrush Stand-up Puddle

Giant’s Causeway

Me in front of the Belfast City Hall

     
     
 
 
 
 
We also enjoyed the opportunity to taste Irish food – Irish stew, Christine organised a catering service in our last week for us and our co-workers in Creative Space – our main work base in Belfast central library. It tasted very good and we enjoyed it very much. One day Christine even brought us Irish shortbread this was my favourite.

Irish food

Irish stew

Shortbread

 
 
 
 
The people of Northern Ireland are all very helpful and friendly. If you did not understand them, you can easily ask again.
Through my task to complete a list where all special days in the year are listed, I could learn many new things and I collected new knowledge about special days from the Days of the Year website.
Customer Service Training
As part of my traineeship at Watson & Co Chartered Marketing , Christine gave Michelle and me the opportunity to take part in her. Here we learned different things about the Principles of Customer Service.
For example, that a good service starts before you get in touch with a customer. That means that a customer will make at first some research about you. So, you should always get right details on your page and make sure to refresh it.
The three-second rule is also very important, because there the first impression is formed for the customer. So, you should have eye contact with your customer and a positive facial expression.
I found the course very helpful and would definitely recommend it to others. At this point I would like to extend a big thanks to our mentor Christine for making it possible for us to participate.
 

Trainer Christine Watson

Christine with the big chocolate letters of Lekkers NI

     
   
   
 
 
 
  Mystery Shopping
Christine our mentor gave Michelle and me  the task to perform work as a mystery shopper – that meant to gather information about the quality of customer service. So we were allowed to test the lunch in a business, look around the coffee shop and then we were allowed to evaluate the place. We asked the staff questions and also bought a product.
Through our experience with Christine and the WorldHost Training we knew which points we had to look at to assess where improvements could potentially be made.
At the end 
I would definitely recommend such an opportunity for an Erasmus traineeship abroad, because you learn so many new things and you see a lot of the world. You also learn a lot for your life, for example, how to run your own household.
You also dare to get out of your comfort zone and talk a lot more with strangers. Through such an Erasmus internship, your English skills improve a lot. I would also like to thank Christine, who taught us a lot and showed and told us a lot about Northern Ireland and the learning opportunities available to us.
About me

Me at the Giant’s Causeway during my time working and living in Northern Ireland.

My name is Romana Schöser and I am 20 years old, I came to Belfast from Austria/ Tyrol via Munich and Dublin airports. At the moment I am doing an apprenticeship at the company ‘Tyrolit’ and I work as an office clerk. I am in the 3rd year of professional school and this is the final year as a trainee/apprentice. My final exam is in July 2023. In my free time I love to play volleyball or go snowboarding in the mountain where I live. I also have an Instagram account about my time in NI – you are welcome to follow me for insights into my Erasmus experience in Northern Ireland – find it at @Romana_in_belfast
You also can find me on LinkedIn – Romana Schöser
About WorldHost
Watson & Co. Chartered Marketing offers WorldHost  – world class customer service training for employees of customer focused companies in Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. The course can also be delivered to English-speaking organisations around the world.
More than one million customer-facing employees worldwide have been trained in a WorldHost customer service programme.
About Watson and Co. Chartered Marketing

My Trainer Christine Watson.

Watson and Co. Chartered Marketing is a marketing consultancy and training company established in April 2005 by the multi award winning and industry experienced Chartered Marketer, SOSTAC Certified Planner and Licensed WorldHost Customer Service Trainer Christine Watson . Christine is my mentor at my Erasmus work placement in Belfast.
Christine and her team work with businesses to deliver creative and effective marketing and customer service solutions to achieve optimal results for them.
About Training MatchMaker
Trainingmatchmaker.com directs people to free or paid online and face-to-face courses to inspire people to go on their next learning journey. There are also various trainers that you can find detailed on the website at Our Trainers – TrainingMatchMaker.
Training MatchMaker was founded by my Erasmus mentor and trainer Christine Watson.
On the TrainingMatchmaker.com website you can also read the different blogs that Michelle and I wrote and published during our Erasmus traineeship in Belfast. At the start of our Erasmus placement in Belfast we wrote our first blog to share our learning plans and we will also be writing a blog at the end of our traineeship which will detail what all we have learned during our time living and working in Northern Ireland. Before coming across trainingmatchmaker.com we were not aware of so many different learning opportunities. Blog – TrainingMatchMaker.
About Erasmus+
Erasmus+ is the European Union’s program to promote education, training, youth and sport in Europe.
The 2021-2027 plan focuses on social inclusion, green and digital transformation and promoting young people’s participation in democratic life.
It supports the priorities and activities set out in the European Education Sector, the Digital Education Action Plan and the European Skills Agenda. the program Also supporting the European Social Rights Pillar, implement the EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027, To promote the development of European sport.
About Intern Europe 
Intern Europe are an international team passionate about providing work experience in Belfast, Glasgow and Liverpool.
In collaboration with European partners and local host companies, they organise traineeships as part of a culture and language experience.
Michelle and I took part in our traineeship with Watson & Co. Chartered Marketing and TrainingMatchmaker.com in Belfast via  Intern Europe. In our first week we attended an English course and visited local landmarks such as Botanic Gardens and the Ulster Museum, which was organised by Intern Europe.      
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