Secrets of a free trip to Vienna for foreigners

It's Wednesday night and the football's on. British Man United supporter Rachel Cousins joins her compatriots down at Vienna's Irish bar Charlie P's to cheer on her side but she is not just in Austria to have a good time.

She is an experienced law graduate working in one of Vienna's top law firms and like 5 or 600 other educated foreign workers that spend time in Austrian business every year, she is not getting paid. But Rachel does not mind, "It's a great opportunity to live and work in another culture that’s not as fast-paced and superficial as London, and improve my language skills too."

The organisation that brings all these bright young things to Austria is called Amadeus and with a yearly turnover of over €1m Amadeus is now Austria's biggest recipient of EU funding for European workforce Integration schemes such as Erasmus and Leonardo Da Vinci.

Director Norbert Voith remembers the moment he realised things had really taken off, "I started to promote package programmes in France and Finland and before I knew it the European commission had put 150.000 ECU [pre-Euro basket currency] into my account to start bringing people over. In fact I had the first ECU bank account in Austria."

Austrian businesses soon realised the appeal of inviting Amadeus workers in. Norbert says, "They didn't have to pay them, just fill out an accident insurance form and away they went!

"The bigger the company was, the more structured it was, the easier it was to place people. They'd just say right, here's your sector, off you go.

"In the technology boom of the 90's Siemens wanted so many people it was crazy. We'd get 20 students in from European universities, sit them down and then the heads of each Siemens department would pick them off one by one!"

Norbert is ever grateful to Austria for being so accommodating to Amadeus and its foreign visitors,
"Austrian companies have been so open and its generally more easy going here. There are rules but you don't feel like there are rules. You have to much more careful in other cities."

Back in 1990 though Amadeus was merely a brainstorming bubble on the notepad of then Economics student Norbert and his friend who needed to come up with a fictional company as part of their university course.

The story soon became a reality when the young entrepreneurs received offers of funding from banks. Norbert explains, "It was very exciting to be offered funding but for the first three years we were just a language summer school because we were still at university. The first summer we brought 35 students over. It was great fun but it wasn't sustainable."

Norbert relishes the freedom that running Amadeus has brought. He says, "I have never had to apply for a job in my life. My other friends all went off to work for Unilever or Coca-cola but we made something on our own." He adds that, "You have to struggle to survive at first but once you have done it for a 5 or 6 years then it becomes instinctive and you are away!"

Man United lost but Rachel isn't too worried. She's having too good a time to get hung up.

14.03.2008 16:16:34