It’s Day 5 now. Over the past 5 days I have gotten less and less sleep as time goes on. I’m sure that won’t come back to bite me.
We woke up this morning and went to a place in the countryside called Baindlkirch that sells Weißwurst, which is a white german sausage. Dr. Feick was telling us how everyone will either “love it or hate it”. All I have to say is…. It’s delicious. And eating it with the sweet mustard and the pretzel makes it so good. Or, maybe I was just hungry this morning; you be the judge of that.
We then went home and prepared for our visit to Faurecia. We took the street car and then a bus to the Faurecia building. First, we had a quick talk from the plant manager who went over safety and rules of the plant. Then, we went on the plant tour. It was a little hard to hear him over the machinery but it was cool to see all the products they produce. In addition, there was one really cool demonstration of a laser cutter cutting a piece of pipe.
We then had a talk from a girl at the company. She talked about student opportunities and how you can work at Faurecia and study abroad at the same time. It was definetely a tempting option if you wanted to have the experience of living abroad and working at a company. In addition, it was offered to students up to 30 years of age which I found kind of interesting because you can be so old and still be able to do this opportunity.
After that, we had a talk from a team leader about Hydrogen and its potential importance to our future’s energy consumption and generation. It delved into topics such as hydrogen gas production, hydrogen fuel cells, and cryogenic hydrogen. These all were methods of using hydrogen to make energy and it was very interesting to see how widespread this fuel source could be. I hope they figure out a way to make producing it cost effective and energy efficient. I think it definetely could be something worth investing into.
Finally, we had a quick presentation from the american plant manager. She walked us through how we could work as an intern and eventually as an employee at the company in the US. The plant that we were at was more for prototype devices than for their actual products so we did not get much information about their current products however. In addition, there were 5-6 hours of talking and plant tours and by the end we were all really tired again. We then left the plant. While we were waiting for the bus, all the guys stood by the road and gestured to try to get the truck drivers to honk their horns. Sometimes we were successful, and sometimes we weren’t but it was fun nonetheless.
After we got back we went to dinner with Maxi, an Augsburg student to a restaurant he recommended to us, “Wirthaus unter dem Bogen”. The food there was great! I had a zwebielrostbraten, which is roast beef with swabian noodles and onions. It was a great time and I got to hang out with the guys and chill. After we had dinner I went back to my room, relaxed a little and then went to bed.
It’s great that we mix company visits and culture visits. We get to gain new insights into businesses but also experience Germany and gain an understanding of the culture. Also, it’s really nice to meet and talk to some of the German students. The guys in particular have been spending a lot of time with Maxi, who started off a little quiet, and quickly became really fun to talk to. Also, the countryside of Germany is really pretty. There are yellow flowers called rapeseed that are really pretty and are everywhere. However, it is noticeable that Germany doesn’t have much forest compared to the US. It has a lot more fields.
