We started off the day bright and early with breakfast at the hotel around 6:45 before departing at 7:15. Today was our first sight visit for my company in focus: Hoerbiger. It was about a 45 minute drive to their first location that we visited. We arrived and received a presentation about the operations of that facility, which involve making their Piezo valve. I found this extremely interesting as it has numerous functions, such as for babies needing help to breathe and in batteries. I found it fascinating when we got to see the valves being made, as the process was so intricate and took so many steps for a tiny valve.

We met back up again after splitting into groups for the tour and loaded the bus again. We went to a second Hoerbiger this time, this location focusing on making parts for a car gear shift. We had several presentations from employees on different aspects of the automotive industry and their automotive division, and got a full tour of their facilities. It was super interesting to see, again, how many steps and huge machines went into making these small pieces.

After our time at Hoerbiger, we loaded the bus down towards Bavaria’s border to a town called Oberammergau. We took a ski lift up to see the Bavarian Alps, which was such an incredible experience! It was rainy and foggy, so we didn’t see much of the Alps at the top, but saw a good amount of the village and mountains from down below. The ski lift was very exciting, and after we went to explore the classic German town of Oberammergau. I was surprised and excited to learn that the town had not been touched during Word War II, so all the structures were original and very classic German style architecture. We went to a traditional Christmas shop and a few other fun stores in the town before heading back to our hotel after another wonderful day in Germany!