Today was our first full day in Augsburg, and we are already starting to get a hang of getting around the city. Our first event today was going to the University of Augsburg campus for the first time. We got to meet the students who are in the Plus 3 program from Germany, and who will be working with us for our company presentations. The company I was assigned is BMW, and I met Tobias, Simon, and Lea who will be working with Matt, Sam, Sarah and I. After we met them we immediately got to work on a company introduction presentation. It was a little stressful trying to get the whole presentation done and planned in two hours with a group of new people, but as a whole it was a great way to get a crash-course on the companies and learn more about each other along the way.
Next, we had lunch at the University restaurant called Mensa. The food was very good and, I have to admit, much better than Market at Pitt. After lunch we were split into three groups for a scavenger hunt around the campus and the city. We were given a huge packet of places to visit and questions to answer, and through the pouring rain and wind we set off to finish it all. It was a lot more difficult than I would have expected, but thankfully we remembered the city fairly well from our city tour yesterday and were unabashed about asking locals for help.
One funny experience was the first time we asked a local couple for their help pointing out an important building. My friend Sarah, who has taken a semester of German at Pitt, spent a full minute struggling to explain our question to the couple in her broken German before the couple interrupted, saying, “maybe try English?” It was then that we learned our first question when asking for advice should be “Sprechen sie Englisch?”
Most of all, our group had a great time staging our photos to match the statues with our coordinator Brad.
The scavenger hunt ended at a beer garden called Riegele Brauhaus, where we got to rest after our scavenger hunt and enjoy some (non-alcoholic) beer samples. As a whole, the scavenger hunt gave us a great way to get to know the city better and learn more about its history. Despite the rain, we had a lot of fun with it. (And my team won!)
After the scavenger hunt, we had a group dinner at Dragone, an italian restaurant. It was a little confusing at first, because we started with German menus and a waiter who spoke both German and Italian but no english. However, we were later given english menus and it was easily the best food I have had in Germany so far. As a whole, today was a great way to get more comfortable with the city and the people we will be working with, and allowed us to gain deeper insight into the culture of Augsburg.