- Quality of education (professors, courses, libraries, classrooms etc)
- Internship/career opportunities
- Strategic location
- Prices (Padova is not very expensive compared to big cities)
- Very friendly, multicultural and kind atmosphere in the university/city

There are a lot of internship opportunities that are possible to get via Careers/Unipd web site, or via professors. If I talk about my experience, it was a constructive and planned way to get an internship. Since in my programme it is required to do an internship after study courses, I have planned to go to a company at the end of the second semester. So, I have started with updating my CV, including my courses that I had obtained during my study and other gathering of documents like motivational letters. I started applying in November 2022. I have applied via social networks, company web sites, and also to some companies that our academic advisor has agreed with. Our academic coordinator and professors made a big impact in our internship applications, since they have some connections in companies, they tried to organize interviews, applications and some connections with the companies.
Therefore, after applying for several companies, in some I had rejections, in some I had interviews- and finally I received two invitations: one from the company in Italy – that I have applied via their website, another one from the company in Germany – that we have applied via our professor. Hence, I had a choice to go to one of the two companies, but then after some clarifications and discussions I was able to go to 2 internships, but on different dates. I went first to the Italian company, and I am in the Research and development department working on the project of more sustainable polymers synthesis. And in a German company I will be working on a project aimed to establish a Circular approach in their production.
Overall, the main things that helped me to get an internship is CV, motivational letter, preparing for interviews and applying for a lot of companies.

I would advice several things:
1. Be ready to some bureaucracy challenges. It sounds scary, but as in every country there are different laws, systems, some documents that you must obtain like tax numbers etc. So be ready for running into some governmental organizations, filling a lot of documents, signing some papers, but if you do everything by the rules, and in order- no problems will occur (the worst thing could happen is to be in queue for more than couple of hours)
2. Sounds easy and obvious but respect the deadlines and read all the instructions, since University of Padova is big enough university and has a long history of international students’ enrollment, everything that is necessary is written on their website, also since a lot of students apply – better to respect the deadline.
3. Learn language basics: people here are very kind overall, so by learning some of the basic phrases you will show them your respect for their culture, language and country overall, so and it is very beautiful language too!
4. Travel across the country, Italia is very big and diverse, 2 villages within 20km might have different dishes, little bit different dialects and food! It is amazing.
5. Catch the rhyme. Italy probably is not the most intensive and fast country in the world, despite people here really value the life, good food and beverages and art of enjoying the life is highly developed here. So, if you are too fast to live, try to get some break. Life not only consists of work and study, it is also about living a life.
6. Don’t be afraid to ask anything from the university crew and the students at the university- all of them are here to help you to decide

Usually during winter/summer holidays I try to travel to another countries in Europe and during short holidays like Easter I travel to another Italian cities. There are several discounts, or some groups tickets on trains/buses so it is possible to travel economically inside the Europe and Italy as well.
Overall, in these 2 years, I have travelled to Germany, France, Portugal, Austria, Hungary and Croatia, in some of these countries I had university friends, in some I travel together with friends. If you are following low cost airlines pages on social networks, they do a lot of discounts so you travel to another country/city for very affordable price (my cheapest tickets were Venezia- Catania when I bought 2 way and back tickets for total of 10 euros! My bus until Venezia airport was 8 euro)
And during the short holidays, there are millions of towns, villages, lakes and mountains to see. On the north of Italy there is a big part of Alps which is called Dolomiti- I really enjoy going there again and again. There is stunning Lake Garda in 2 hours from Padova by train/bus. Venezia is just in 15 minutes by train, so you can go to probably one of the most beautiful cities in the world every weekend! Here, another thing to mention is cycling. Cycling is very popular in Italia, (Giro d’Italia is one of the biggest bicycle races in the world) so the cycling infrastructure is good enough (at least in Veneto region where Padova is located) so with groupmates we went to Sottomarina- coastal city with beach - on bikes. We cycled about 60 km and despite it was tough and demanding physically it is one of the memorable journeys during the study.

LG (life is good)

Once, in September 2022 I went to the city in the north of Veneto. I went to the waterfalll there, hiked a little bit then I got back to the city. So I was just enjoying in the historical center of the city and I was eating my gelato and suddenly one old man come to me and just started a conversation. His name was Angelo- he was living in italy for more than 30 years, but originally he was from South America. So he spoke some italian with very strong spanish accent and he was speaking fast. I as barely understanding him, using my all italian knowledge and of course with the help of online translate services. So what I understood: he really enjoys car camping, and travels all across the Europe, he took my number and said when it will be good season and after some time maybe I will call you and together we will go to Kazakshstan by car. He said that he usually travels with his son and friends. So we had a good conversation, afterwards I came back to Padova.
After several month he called me on phone but I did not understand nothing. I wrote him on Whatsapp and said “Dear Angelo, it is better if you will write me since I will be able to translate it”. After I received a message: “you better give me back my money in Barcelona on this address tomorrow at 5”. I wasn’t getting anything and he called again, so there I was in the study room with my friend -Italian groupmate and I asked him to reply. Afterwards, my Italian groupmate was shocked he just hanged on the call and said, “Ayan who is this man? He says that you promised him something in Barcelona he paid and now he demands his money back”. I said that there is nothing of such a thing, so my friend explained to him and then we found that the Angelo just confused the phone numbers!