Thursday May 11, 2017
This morning we got to sleep in an extra hour before having to get up for breakfast. Instead of having our usual hotel breakfast, we drove 40 minutes outside of Augsburg to a restaurant that serves weisswurst and pretzels. Apparently the restaurant is very well known in the area, and only serves food on Thursday mornings. The sausage was very different for me because it is a whitish grey color, which I have never seen before in a sausage. It tasted very salty and we dipped the sausage and pretzels into a sweet mustard, which I really liked. One of the German student’s uncle is actually the owner of the restaurant so he came and talked to us about the business, which is only a hobby for him, as his day job is a butcher. He let us go into the kitchen where we got to watch the workers actually make the sausage, which was cool because I never knew how they got the meat into the casing before. The German students taught us the proper way to eat the sausage, either by biting it and sucking the meat out or by slicing the casing down the side and peeling it off.
After our breakfast, we headed back to Augsburg and took the tram to KUKA, a robotics company. The building was extremely modern and we started off with a tour of the factory. First we went through a very high tech room that showed the history of KUKA, and had some interactive stations. One of the stations let you draw a design on a tablet and then would recreate the design with a laser. The entire area was very dimly lit and futuristic looking! The tour then proceeded on through the factory part of the building, where the robots are used. These robots seemed very new and able to work without much interaction from humans. Their main jobs are to build parts for vehicles such as cars, planes, boats, etc. After the walking tour, we listened to a presentation that went more into detail about KUKA as a company, and what the future looked like.
Following the KUKA visit, my team had to work on our Faurecia presentation so we all met up at the University of Augsburg. After working together for a while, we all went to dinner on campus. We ended up choosing an Italian restaurant, where I had spaghetti Bolognese, which was very homey tasting because I get to eat that a lot in the United States. It was fun to have dinner with the German students because I got to know them better and they are all super nice!
Tomorrow we are hearing from SGL and BMW! Until then…
-Emma
