Phoebe Katz, May 9
Today was my first day waking up in Germany, which is very exciting. I tried the hotel breakfast for the first time. It was much better than I expected. The baguette had a nice flaky exterior, which I appreciated. Also, the eggs were light and fluffy. We headed to the University of Augsburg after breakfast, to meet our German partners and give our first company presentations. We took the tram there and it was very clean. I was surprised that they donn’t have a more consistent way of checking tickets. The current system puts a lot of trust in the citizens which is difficult to imagine happening in the US. The tram stop at the university has super cool trees that look a bit like monsters.
Our first mission of the day was to give a short presentation on the companies we had been assigned. My company is Webasto and I knew nothing about it before today. The group work started out a bit rough, the wifi did not work great and some of my group members did not have their computers. We made it work though and I was glad to learn a little bit about my company. After our presentations, we ate lunch in the school cafeteria (the Mensa). It was better than I expected and it reminded me a little of IKEA (the general aesthetics, mostly) but I thought the stations would all have different food and they did not. I would have appreciated more variety, like we have at the Pitt dining halls. I was also disappointed by the lack of self-serve soda machines.
Our next mission was a scavenger hunt throughout Augsburg. It began with a pretty disorganized campus tour, which was confusing because I wasn’t sure when the tour ended and the hunt began. It bothered my competitive spirit. Many of the questions require that we approach random Germans and ask things of them in a foreign language. That was very uncomfortable for me and I did not enjoy it at all. Luckily, some of my group members were more comfortable doing that. Many of the later questions could be done without asking for help so I like those better. I did enjoy wandering around, trying to figure out clues. My group did a fantastic job but we were robbed of victory. Despite the fact that we lost, we got gummy bears and a tote bag, which was a good prize.
We had dinner with the whole group at an Italian restaurant. I wanted normal water, along with most people at my table but they brought us one liter of still and one liter of bubbly water. One girl ended up with an entire liter while 7 of us tried to share the still one. It was very frustrating and I did not appreciate the lack of cups of ice water. We overwhelmed the kitchen, so it took a long time to get all the food. My pizza was one of the last things to come out but it was delicious. As a New Yorker, I deem the pizza an 8/10. Great sauce (which I personally think is the key to a fabulous pizza), good crust and cheese.
Overall a very good first full trip day.