May 8th, 2018

For breakfast today: the same as every other day! A croissant, cheese and jam! Today I realized something as well about the coffee in the hotel. Coffee here is much lighter here, and not as strong with a little more foam on top, but if you order American coffee it comes normally. I prefer the way it comes in the machine in the hotel, but I didn’t expect a difference in coffee between here and home. 

We left again at 8 am for Continental. This was my group’s company for the final presentation! I’m in a group with Nick, Brett, and Frank. The German students are Freddy, Matthias and Luca! Since this was our company we had to focus on asking good questions and taking good notes. The final presentation is a company analysis on Continental and their innovation and business strategy. Arielle had said this was a cool tour last year so I was already excited. I also knew from our introductory presentations that Continental was very innovative and involved in a wide range of product lines. 

To get to Continental, located in Regensburg we had a two hour bus ride ahead of us. Since it was so early, everybody fell asleep, but I didn’t. So this was the most boring bus ride so far. Luckily we had good weather and it was  another perfectly clear day.  Before actually going to Continental we had a guided tour planned for the center city of Regensburg. 

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The tour began in the old town hall square in “old Regensburg” with our tour guide Doris. Just walking through the city to get to the starting tour location, I already loved the city. All the buildings were bright pastel colors up and down the street. As we got deeper there were so many narrow alleyways that had tiny little shops and cafes. The tour itself was super fun, besides the fact that I forgot to change out of my business flats and had horrible blisters. I learned a lot about the history and culture of Regensburg as well as some fun facts about Augsburg. Some of the fun facts included:

• Regensburg is the 4th largest city in Bavaria 
• All the buildings, like town hall and old city, are from medieval times, and while some look newer on the outside, all the interiors are the original material. This is why there are such strict laws to prevent business owners from knocking down walls and expanding. 
• Augsburg was the actual Roman  capital even though Regensburg was a Roman city 
• Wealth of merchants and the wealth was measured with “skyscrapers” and wells on their land. The “skyscrapers” were actually just tall hollow towers that only mattered depending on their height
• I saw the hat Johnny Deep worse in Alice in Wonderland in a local hat making shop
• The St. Peter’s cathedral started being constructed in the 13th century and still to this day is not completely finished because they are constantly replacing the original sandstone section by section. Doris said it will most likely be completed in hundreds of year 

After the city tour, we hopped back on the bus for a 15 minutes ride back to Continental. When we first arrived we had to show our passports to get visitor badges. They also gave us lots of goodies with the Continental logo. This was a longer site visit than hirschvogel, because we had two presentations, a tour, and lunch.  The first presentation was done by a member of the Regensburg hr department, Mark. He gave us an introduction to Continental and information on Regensburg individually. He told us about how contienental is expanding outside of just the automobile industry and looking towards more unique industries like footwear and mining. We asked a few questions regarding this as well as some obstacles Continental is currently facing in a struggling market. After this presentation we ate lunch in the complex’s cafeteria. I ate beef stroganoff with croquettes for lunch, it wasn’t my favorite meal so far but still good. I as well as some other students say with Mark at lunch and was able to talk to him about his experiences when visiting the US and hear about some of the things that are growing more popular in Germany, like the NBA and American football. He said he has visited San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Dallas. We also showed him pictures of the Pittsburgh skyline from Mt. Washington and he said it looked most like Frankfurt. After lunch we headed to the tour!!! 

The tour started in the Continental Live! Building created solely for aninteractive experience with the company. Again, we were prohibited from taking any photos. We were required to wear a lab coat, head phones, and foot covers. The foot covers had strings used to prevent Electric static discharge while in the lab because it could impact the machines and stop them from working. To test this we had to step on a machine that measured the ESD. It took me three tries to get the shoes on right and right when we walked in the lab, they came undone! The whole time I thought I was going to ruin something (luckily I didn’t)! We watched the production of PCB’s, the use of automatic robots in final production, their robots used for transporting parts and materials, as well as discussing the innovations they are looking to use to improve processing and manufacturing. I’m excited to do some further research with my group regarding all the product lines that Continental covers as well as analyzing its current struggles and obstacles and how they will impact the company’s future. Presentation’s are one of the final things we do here and with the German students, so I’m glad we get to work so much with them and they come to the city tours and site visits!

We then made a return the center of Regensburg. We had our second traditional Bavarian dinner planned for 6. We had about an hour and a half of free time to explore a little more than what we saw earlier in the day. A large group of us were in need of caffeine! We walked for a little looking for a cafe to possibly get a cup of coffee. On the walk, Jess, Alex, and I got a little distracted by all the stores and decided to do some shopping in Zara. We didn’t get anything from there, but did decide to try some chocolate from a little stand outside. Alex tried to order hers in German, but the woman could easily tell we did not speak German. She nicely helped us in English and we tried some yummy chocolate with almonds. We ran into Arielle on the way back towards the hotel and stopped in another shop named Mango. I had been in a Mango before on a trip to Barcelona and really liked the clothes, but sadly I didn’t really find anything worth buying, so we called it quites on the shopping and headed to the restaurant.

The restaurant was named Weltenburger am Dom. We had the choice between four dishes, and luckily the German students were there to help us translate what each option was. I ended up ordering a mushroom dish with bread dumplings. A lot of the other students order the Schnitzel which is very popular in Bavaria, and it looked pretty good. We had to be on the bus exactly at 7:30, so unlike the other dinners this one was a little shorter. But, it was still fun regardless being there with the German students and answering some of the questions they had about college in America. They are all required to study abroad as Global Business students and a few are coming to the US, so we told them about college football games, sororities, fraternities, and some other things that are in the “college experience”.

The day ended after ANOTHER long bus ride back to Augsburg. When making the game plan for the next day in the hotel lobby Arielle and Dr. Feick said today was the longest day and we made it through! However, tomorrow is going to be the earliest wake up yet for a very very early trip to Audi.

Tomorrow: Site visit to Audi in Ingolstadt and then free time in Augsburg!