We started today off with a long bus ride to Continental headquarters. Here, we had a presentation that went through Continental’s business model. I was astounded because I thought that they were just involved in tires. Turns out that they are involved in a wide range of subjects in the automotive industry such as car entertainment, automation, and safety. I am really intrigued by the concept of automated vehicles, and I think that Continental is definitely wise to be investing in this field.

After the presentation, we toured around the continental factory area where they create their products. Like BMW, they had a lot of robots do the work, but they had them do work with humans. Some of their robots transport materials from one station to the other, but they had sensors to make sure that they did not run into humans. One time, we were crowded around a walkway, and a worker and a robot were trying to get past us at the same time. The robot ended up getting past and it knocked the guys papers out of his hand, which was pretty funny.

After Continental, we toured Regensburg. The city was amazing, with a beautiful cathedral and old merchant’s mansions. The mansions had a big courtyard in the middle of them, which was very cool. The architecture was very gothic, and Germany seems to do a very good job of maintaining their history. We really do not get to see this sort of history back in the US, and it reminds us of how young our country is compared to a lot of European countries. We then had another great dinner (I had some excellent schnitzel).

I talked to the German students, and they follow the NBA and NFL, which is common among a decent amount of German students. German students also follow American music, TV shows, and movies. I had no idea that American entertainment had this large of an international reach, which may explain why English is a common bilingual language.