Captain’s Log: Day 2 (Part 2)

After leaving the Augsburg students, we joined up with another group of Augsburgers (I don’t know if it would be Augsburgians or something else, but I’m just gonna stick with it!) to take a tour of their University.

I thought what I saw in the beginning was nice, but shortly after I was blown away by just how different our Universities are! 🤯

In the US, an unmowed lawn is usually taken as a sign of messiness, but here in University of Augsburg, the grass and the plants are allowed to OVERGROW, and it makes the campus look and feel very natural, which I really loved!

After seeing all of this, I realize Pitt is really urban for a university, full of buildings, cars, and streets, while Augsburg has no cars on the actual campus, small buildings coexisting with trees and meadows, and walkways that look like they came from a fairytale! ✨✨✨

Once we finished our tour of the University of Augsburg, we split into three groups to go on a scavenger hunt in the city of Augsburg. As we counted off 

(in German of course
One = Ains
Two = Zwei
Three = Drei)

I got on team Zwei! (The best team in my opinion [absolutely no bias in this decision])

And I was grouped up with Sophia, Anna, Nate, Zach, and Jerry. Coincidentally, a team of all Engineers!

While the other teams were all communicating about stuff, (not sure what they were talking about honestly) we decided to get to work right away so we could finish as soon as possible (we’re all very competitive people fyi)

So we dashed! Taking photos of things, learning about the city, and riding the bus into the city way before any of the other teams! Once we got into the city again (if I haven’t mentioned already, the University is a bit far from the actual city) we were on our feet for about 4 hours marching from one location to the next, and appreciating the architecture and the rich history of the city. 

We took some really awesome photos, with the German upperclassmen phones, but we currently didn’t get a copy of some of them yet 🙁 , so check back sometime, and I’ll update the cover photo when I get the chance 🙂

We explored two different Churches to learn about the bishops and other influential roles in the foundation and history of the city. (Augsburg is not actually a German city, it’s a Roman city, and therefore the Church had great power over the city at some point in history)

In both Churches, we went to an underground crypt to learn about Saints who were important to the foundation of the city. I mean this with no disrespect whatsoever, but I felt like Indiana Jones when we explored the crypts, I’m not a Christian, so I don’t really enter Churches, but it was still fascinating to me to see the architecture of a Roman Church

Once we finished the scavenger hunt, we made our way into a very famous bar and waited for the other teams to finish because we finished first. Once they arrived, our German chaperones all got together to discuss who won the scavenger hunt, while we were offered three small beers for taste testing. To me, drinking is forbidden in my religion, so I decided to try Spezi instead. Spezi is a very famous drink in Germany that is basically cola and orange soda mixed in one drink! I learned about this legendary drink very early in the Plus3, and at last, my patience led me to the drink itself.

I took a sip, and just as the description explains, it was quite literally half tasting like cola, and half tasting like orange soda. But ultimately, very tasty and an experience that was absolutely worth the wait!

Finally the scavenger hunt winners were announced! Our team, Team Zwei, got second place ironically (rigged if you ask me) Team Ains got first, and Team Drei (who changed their name to Team Spezi) got third. It was a fun scavenger hunt across the city though! Very informative and exciting!! (Also, tons of walking ALL over)

Finally we wrapped up today by visiting an Italian restaurant called Dragone, with a cool dragon on the front sign.

The restaurant had a plethora of options, but I kept it simple today and ordered a 4 cheese pizza which tasted really nice 🙂

Whew! That was a very long post, I will try to stay a bit more concise here on out, but today was just so educational! Tomorrow we start company visits, basically visiting companies based off of our German teams so in the end we can give a grand professional presentation about the company and all of it’s secrets and wonders that no regular person can learn about from just a company main page.

Gute Nacht, and see you tomorrow!