Stockholm School of Economics in Riga Students' Magazine

When I was thinking whether I should take up the offer of doing my internship in Warsaw, a lot of my friends were rather skeptical. What on earth would I do in an ugly city like that? Nevertheless, my adventurous side kicked in and I decided to go. After all, I was very curious to see the inside of a large corporation. In the end, Warsaw turned out to be one of those cities where you can have a great time, if you know exactly where to go.

Just a couple days after returning from Riga, I packed my things and left to Warsaw. After many hours on a bus, there I was, standing in front of a shiny building with the name “Asseco Poland” on it.Asseco is a leading IT company in Eastern Europe, expanding rapidly by acquisitions across many Eastern European countries. They specialize in producing proprietary software, mainly banking. To many this is a rather vague notion, and I had to spend some time to get a deeper understanding of the software industry. (Here I can also note, by the way, that the notorious Economics of Networks course does not provide any relevant knowledge for working in an IT company ;) )

My placement was in the finance department in the corporation’s headquarters. To my disappointment, my tasks were not as much about finance as about market research. Nevertheless, I came to the conclusion that the latter might be even a more interesting option considering that the “finance” that the people in this department are engaged in is basically “accounting”. So, I and another intern got to spend most of our time looking for and making basic analysis of investment opportunities in countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, etc., while our colleagues, the finance people, took massive overtime struggling to meet the deadline for publishing the consolidated quarterly reports to the public.

My coworkers were one of the main reasons why my 6 week stay in Warsaw was a pleasant experience. It’s not a secret that Lithuanians have a rather unfriendly attitude towards the Polish people due to historical reasons. The people who I met definitely do not deserve that – they were friendly, welcoming and rather simple, even if a bit nerdy :) (after all, they do accounting…) Lengthy chats over lunch were followed by going out for beer, so that in the end it was sad to leave.

And what about the city? It’s not as ugly as it seems and it has many interesting things to offer (ask Justas Grigalauskas, Warsaw’s current local – he’s as passionate about the city as one could get!) There are crazy bars, amazing parks and frequent concerts in addition to the very visible scars of the sad history from the World War 2. I also had a weekend trip to Lublin where I was surprised to find a large square in the city center being called the “Lithuanian Square”. Beat that!

All in all, if you ever have an opportunity to do your internship in Warsaw, I suggest you take it. It’s a good experience to be on your own and find your cozy place in a city which might not look so welcoming from the first sight!