As we continue into our second and final week in Germany, we went to Ulm.  Ulm is home to the tallest church tower in the world.  We had a small city tour and a tour of the church.  It was a Protestant church that started as a church in the 14th century.  Work continued to further grow the church through the 19th century.  In addition, there was some small reconstruction after World War II.  Hundreds of years ago they used the church as a private funeral home.  Nobles and wealthy families used to hold services there with their own private alter.  Now in the current day, the alters are no longer there.  What is interesting though was they kept the emblems on the walls.  Each family had a different style, color scheme, and animals to create a plaque in memory of a family member.  The church was gothic style and had a beautiful architecture that was carried through centuries of development.  After our tour, we had the opportunity to climb the tower.  I was very excited but I knew it mean lots of stairs to climb.  We got our tickets and started to climb.  I was surprised by how narrow the stairwell was.  My foot was not even fully on the stair and each stair was slanted to create a spiral staircase.  Needless to say after about 8 flights I was pretty tired. It did not help that the staircase was so tight it automatically makes you dizzy.  When we finally got to the top after 399 steps, the view was beautiful.  In reality, we were a little less than halfway.  Unfortunately, we could not go all the way to the top because there was construction going on. Nonetheless, the view was still beautiful.  Far out into the skyline, you could make out the Alps.  For me, the way down was almost as bad as the steps up.  I was scared I was going to fall and just keep going.  I took it slow and I did not fall.  I’m not usually afraid of heights, but I was gripping the center pole for life and I was glad to be back down at ground level.  We had a short city tour following and talked about other landmarks around the city.  We even saw the famous tilted hotel.  In Ulm, there is a hotel that is right next to a river.  The hotel over the years had started to lean over the river, making the whole hotel slanted.  The hotel was still fully functional and it was a sight to see for sure.  Next, we visited an Italian restaurant for lunch. I got a massive pizza with pepperoni, ham, onions, and peppers.  It was amazing and I had to take half of it home because it was so massive.  We took the train home which was nice since it started raining at that point.

Once back in Augsburg, my company group met up with the Augsburg students.  After trudging through the rain, we spent time working on our project.  Our company is Webasto and we want to focus our presentation on their current success and how that can lead to future potential.  Our final presentation is Wednesday so it’s really crunch time.  Our group ran through it and I am confident in our presentation so far.  

Every day has been crazy busy if you could not tell.  Right now, I need to stay motivated to work on our presentation.  So much to do, so little time!