Traineeship in the medieval town of San Miniato in Italy

Laura Bakšytė

My traineeship took a place in a small medieval town of San Miniato situated between Pisa and Florence in the astonishing hills of Tuscany. I worked at the four stars hotel as a receptionist. This hotel belongs to Nannetti family whose members are already the 4th generation in the hotel business. Since the very beginning they made me feel like a true family member and I got along with others colleagues as well. As the town of San Miniato is very small, I spent a lot of time in my workplace and learnt a lot of things not only regarding my professional skills. For instance, I learnt how to make some very delicious local dishes.

Talking about my traineeship, I worked 5 days a week and my tasks were to do check-in and check-out of the guests, to reserve rooms, to answer the phone calls and e-mails and to solve any kind of problems faced by our clients: from recommending a good restaurant to eat to interpret between English speaking guest and Italian speaking taxi driver. Moreover, I also helped to cope with daily works of the family.

During my free days I traveled a lot in the region of Tuscany and beyond and visited numerous stunning places like underground corridors of the medieval hospital in Pistoia, picturesque lakes of Trentino region, native houses of Dante and Boccaccio, breathtaking towers of Bologna and old piligrims’ way Via Francigena.

During this Erasmus+ traineeship experience I met a lot of people from all over the world and improved my cultural knowledge, problem solving skills and my language competences for I had to communicate the guests in Italian, English, Russian and French languages. Now I am undoubtedly more confident and eager to continue this improvement in my home country.