My Tour4Youth journey: Siiri

International traineeship: from Finland to Sweden

Tour4Youth provides also international traineeship possibilities within the Central Baltic area Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Sweden. International experiences within the region increase the youth’s skills in the tourism, hospitality and restaurant sectors in various ways. These are, for example, cultural skills, language skills and communication skills. All international experience adds to the pool of understanding the diversity of people and cultures, which increase, for example, service level and satisfaction among customers.

Our first international trainee is Siiri from Saimaa Vocational College Sampo. Siiri is in her last year of completing her tourism studies, and she has also completed her studies in catering.

Different cultures can share similar work practices

Siiri chose restaurant Håll bar & kök in Söderköping , Sweden for her traineeship location. She hoped to have the traineeship in a small city and wanted to get to know the city better. Also, Siiri aimed at getting to know people and companies for future contacts and possible employment.

“I wanted to know more about the environment, people and culture. In a more professional job perspective, I wanted to see if I could succeed in the restaurant industry with my previous vocational qualification.”

Siiri’s traineeship went well, and she enjoyed the experience.

“I learned that I’m much better at details and paying attention than I thought.”

Naturally there were many lessons learned in the traineeship, as always. Among the positive surprises was how everything in a different country was the exact same in a physical sense – it may seem a bit silly to have doubted that, but these are the things international experience gives us, the similarity and differences of places, people, and habits. The work was organised in the same methods and tools as in Finland – washing the dishes, cleaning things, carrying things and so on were done the same. This gives courage to embark on other experiences, as the unknown seems less unknown. In the future, Siiri is able to ask for continuous onboarding and support as any trainee or employee is justified to.

“Doing the work was something I had learned also earlier, so there were not so many surprises in how the work was done, so I did not have to learn so many new things regarding the work. This left me energy to focus on the people and language.”

“Most people I worked with spoke fluent English as well and were really helpful when there was time for it and I asked.”