This morning we toured Hörauf & Kohler, a plastic manufacturing company based in Augsburg. I would say that this tour was probably the most interesting of all of our company visits thus far for a couple different reasons. Most importantly, the tour was given in German. The company has one English speaking employee who was on vacation, leaving us with a tour in German translated by a translator from the University. Needless to say, this made the tour quite different. Another interesting difference between our tour at H&K and all of our other company visits was the company’s attitude. At all of the other visits, guides were almost trying to sell their company. They would highlight only the positives about their company and defend themselves in every way possible. H&K was different. Our guide here was very transparent about the fact that the company is not projected to do well in the future.

After the company visit, my group and I went directly to the University where we started and finished preparing our presentation for tomorrow. Tomorrow’s presentation is where we talk about all of the things we’ve learned about our specific company and how they run their business. After a few hours of straight work, we called it quits and headed back to the town center for lunch.

One of the students from the University recommended a restaurant that has the best döner so we ate here and then enjoyed delicious ice cream afterward. This afternoon, after the visit and working on our project, was the first afternoon that I had free time to shop this entire trip! I went to some of the clothing stores around town and also went to grocery store. The grocery store was not much different than our stores in the U.S. except of course all of the brands are in German. Today was a very productive day with lots of school work as well as exploring. Tomorrow we’ll finalize and present our final presentations to the class! I can’t believe the trip is almost over.