Today we woke up bright and early to go to our Weißwurstfrühstück, which is a German breakfast usually containing a white sausage made of pork and viel, pretzels, and mustard. The Germans also typically drink beer with it, but we chose to pass on the 8am beer. The sausage was very interesting, and came in a bowl of water that it was boiled in. I typically don’t love sausage, but I will never say no to trying something new. In order to eat it, you have to cut off the intestine that it is cased in. Once I got through the casing, the sausage tasted amazing. Dr. Feick recommended I try it with the mustard and it was even better. We also had pretzels to go along with it, and they were the best pretzels I’ve had here so far! I can’t believe I forgot to take a picture of the food though 🙁
I was surprised to see how many people were available on a Thursday morning to have breakfast, and I was also very surprised how many Germans were drinking beer so early in the morning. I wonder if they are allowed to go into work late on days where they have the special breakfast.
After breakfast, we came back to the hotel to chill for a little bit. I took a short nap and then got ready to go to Faurecia / Forvia, which is the company that I am doing my presentation on. Again, we were not allowed to take any pictures at the location. When we arrived, they gave us a brief talk about the company, and then sent us on a tour of the factory. The location we were at was mainly working on parts for exhausts for cars and tractors. I was especially interested in the Porsche GT3 exhausts that they were making. Something that was notable about this factory compared to the first two, was that the robotic parts were extremely fast here, whereas the robots at the first two factories were much slower. We enjoyed watching the robotic welders for a long time because it was so satisfying.
After the tour, we went back to the meeting room for another presentation and refreshments. This presentation talked a lot about some of their new initiatives in order to stay on top of the market. The main new project for them is hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles or other uses. The hydrogen can be converted into electricity and then used to power electric cars or any other machine requiring electricity. At Faurecia, they mainly worked on creating the containers to store the hydrogen in, which have to be super secure and leak proof in order to be allowed to sell. I was impressed with how forward thinking the company was, and how good they were about researching new markets.
After we finished the presentations, we got on the streetcar to go back to our hotel. On the way there Evan took a little nap. After getting back, we all layed down for a bit before going out to dinner. For dinner, we decided on a Bavarian restaurant that was actually really cool. I got another schnitzel, and Fox got a massive Currywurst. Once again, another amazing dinner and a great way to end another day in Augsburg! I cant wait to visit Audi tomorrow!
