Captain’s Log: Day 2 (Part 1)
(Note, this blog ended up being so long I decided to split it into two so you, the readers, don’t feel overwhelmed looking at it all together 😉 enjoy!)
Guten Morgen!
(Feels good to say that, after some well needed hours of sleep [5 hours 😭])
Today began with what may have been the nicest view I’ve seen in a while. From my hotel room window, I looked out and saw the faint light of the sunrise kissing the architecture and the general skyline.
but my mind was practically singing it out to the world.
Anyways, I began to get ready and realized breakfast began at 6:30 and our official Plus3 Day began at 8:10 to meet in the hotel lobby (in German manners arriving at 8:10 exactly is considered late, have to master punctuality!)
Additionally me and my roommate wanted to stop by a grocery store to grab some water before the day’s activities, and also to just check out the customs in the market!
After waking my roommate up, we went down to breakfast at around 6:50. We were a bit suspicious of what quality of food would be served considering the surprise of how compact the room was, but when we arrived, we were surprised to see the breakfast was actually decent!
(Additional note: Sorry not as many photos today, because it was so packed I didn’t have much time to remember to take them, but tomorrow I will cover way more!)
After a quick breakfast, Ben, Nate, and I dashed to the neatest grocery/convenience store called Netto to appreciate the excellent prices in Germany. Nate found a 33 gram bag of Gummy Bears for just 1 Euro! In fact everything in Netto had a sticker that gad a label indicating somewhere between 30% to 50% off. I found the water (Wasser) bottles I was looking for to see that 6 bottles costed .75 Euros, which was actually somewhat decent! I grabbed 3 cases and went to the cashier, but when he showed the total, my amusement quickly faded.
Turns out there is a thing called plastic tax (not the actual name of it, but what I like to refer to it as) that is actually a very smart feature the Germans implemented into their society.
The Einwegpfand was 4.50 Euros which was the price of the plastic tax!
Basically the tax was twice as much as the actual water costed!
Basically the idea is, every plastic bottle purchased comes with a fee automatically added depending on the number of bottles purchased. (This gets quite expensive when you buy a mini case of water like I did)
The taxing is unfortunate in this way, but the nice thing is, if you bring back your empty bottle to a store, or any empty bottle with the barcode still visible by the label, then you are entitled to refunds based on how many bottles you bring in. Genius! An incentivized way to get people to recycle their bottles once they finish.
But also a good way to keep the streets clean and free from trash because no one wants to lose the chance to earn potential money.
(I realized I just ranted a lot about plastic up there, but this is important! I learn about the culture, share in the blog, and then you learn about the culture as well.)
Anyways, today we were going to the University of Augsburg! I was very thrilled at this idea as I would get the chance to see what a campus was like in another country. So after a semi-long bus ride, we arrived in Universität Augsburg!
My first impressions were in total awe, this university is absolutely beautiful! Pitt has its charms (kind of), but it’s full of traffic, very urban, and nowhere near as much green anywhere! To top off Universität Augsburg, the canvas was very quiet, even though it was Monday [or Montag 🙂 ], it was very peaceful! (More photos in part 2)
We entered one of the buildings and were assigned teams to work with Augsburg students for the remainder of the program. The work we do with these teams pretty much accounts for some of the largest parts of our grades enrolled in this class.
We are team Faurecia (a company that specializes in sustainable and safe systems for vehicles), consisting of Ben, Sydney, and I coming from Pitt, and Mona, Clara, and Elena coming from Augsburg. To get us on our way, we were given about 1 hour to research and prepare a mini presentation based on the company we are assigned to research through the program. This mainly consisted of the primary information that anyone can learn about just by using the internet. This was very challenging as it was a pain to connect to the internet, and format our presentations alongside the research and “practice” we had our presentation with all of our “time”.
After presentations I must say, this was probably not my best work 😭, team Faurecia came in clutch at the end and managed to finish the presentation and answer all questions
(Wooo go team! 😂) Blog continues in next post! See you soon!