Today we left around 8:00 am to go on our first company tour to Faurecia.  Faurecia is a company in the automotive industry that creates exhaust systems.  The tour started out with a presentation on the business side of the company.  I personally was slightly overwhelmed by all of the business terminology, but afterwards there was a presentation on the engineering aspect of the company and that was right up my alley.  I later talked to some of the business majors and it was interesting to hear that they had the exact opposite experience.  After the talks, we were given a tour of the testing and production facilities.  At the testing facilities, they would stress the components at certain frequencies to make sure they would hold up.  I thought that it was crazy that they would destroy the engines during testing before their actual components.  Since a major part of the exhaust system is the audio engineering that determines the acoustics of the car, they had really sweet audio damping test rooms to analyze the sound from the car exhaust.  They even had one where they could fit an entire car.  After the testing, we got a tour of the production line.  They had really cool machines that could laser weld metal into pipes automatically.  After the company visit, we had lunch on our own.  I got tomato soup and a really good salad.  After lunch, we were given a tour of some of the many churches in Augsburg.  We also learned a lot about Martin Luther on the way.  The tour was very interesting and informative and I was reminded of my childhood because I went to a Lutheran church when I was younger.   For dinner, we hung out with some of the German students and we got to talk about the differences between the U.S. and Germany.  We also discussed politics for a bit.  It was a very busy and fun filled day and I slept like a rock when I finally got back to the hotel.

-The organ in one of the churches

-Some artwork from the Luther tour