Today was out first company visit and there was no rain! Woohoo! We traveled to Faurecia, a French company that is a top manufacturer of car engines and exhaust systems, among other products, in the automotive industry. We had to put on safety googles, a lab coat, and steel toe safety shoe slip-on’s to be able to participate in the tour around the facility. Let me just say how awful those shoes were as they were way too big for my feet and forced me to walk like a penguin. Dr. Feick can back me up on how ridiculous I looked! During the presentation portion of the visit, we got some coffee (yum!) and carbonated water (not so “yum!”, but the usual for Germany) and listened to two speakers who gave us an overview of the company and a technical analysis of their products. Afterwards, we proceeded to the walking tour of the facility where we explored rooms for designing, developing, and testing the engines and exhaust systems. There was this one room that had triangular spiky things that absorbed sound on the walls and allowed the engineers to measure the cars acoustics. I wanted to scream to see how loud it really sounded, but I’m not four years old so I kept it together. We also walked through a production plant where robots were used to help assemble the car parts and move them from one area to another. Robots are crazy. After the visit, we were free to get lunch so my friends and I wandered to a coffee shop called “Henry’s Coffee” and indulged on some high-quality coffee and food. I got a delicious chicken sandwich but I was more excited about my tiramisu cappuccino. It tasted as great as it looked (see below), and I finished it in five minutes, which was depressing. After lunch we met back up to take a tour revolving around Martin Luther, since it is the 500th year anniversary of his 95 Thesis. We began at St. Jakob’s church and worked our way around the city through other churches and buildings of importance and relevance. I was stunned at not only how unique each church was but how enormous and beautiful the organs were at each church. After the tour, I was ready to head back to the hotel, get changed, and head into town for a more traditional Bavarian dinner with friends. I ordered duck, potatoes, and cabbage for dinner, and it was all phenomenal. I also split a fresh baked apple strudel with some friends with vanilla custard that made that meal even more perfect. By the way, expect to hear about my delicious meals almost everyday!
