We got up today for our first full day in Germany and took a trip on the tram to the University of Augsburg. It’s interesting to see how much more public transit is used here in Europe compared to the States. It is also much better quality than any public transit I’ve been on in America. When we got to the university I immediately noticed the differences between the campus and Pitt’s campus. First was the architecture, this is a given, but the buildings look very different than I imagined, and compared to our school buildings there are a lot more windows. Also, they allow the grass on the campus grow freely while in Pittsburgh they keep it cut short and cleaned up. They also built the buildings without air-conditioning, which I found out from the students that they believe that cold air blowing on you will give you a cold.

While at the university, we had a lecture, some group work, and a short presentation to introduce each of our companies to the other groups. It was nice to get to meet and collaborate with the Augsburg students and all of the presentations went smoothly given the fact we only had an hour and a half to prepare. Our group also had a chance to hear a presentation from Patrick Will about Audi today as he will not be at our tour next Monday. Before leaving the school, we had lunch at the Mensa, the “Eatery” of their campus. There was a good amount of options, but it was different from the Eatery in the fact that you have to pay for each individual item you pick up. At the Eatery once you swipe in you can eat unlimited food, which evidently causes much more waste. I have noticed that Germany does small things to avoid waste and one-use plastics. Overall, they are more environmentally friendly than the U.S., but they are making strides to catch up in that aspect.

Public transit seemed more reliable until some of our group got stuck on the tram on the way to the stadium for the scavenger hunt.  The door wouldn’t open when we pressed the button and he had to walk pretty far back towards campus to catch a tram to Koenigsplatz. We got a photo with the stadium (shown above) on the way back to meet up with the rest of the group, tried to finish the scavenger hunt, but got rained out which ruined our paper. We just went back to the hotel to change clothes and headed out for dinner. Unfortunately, today we had one bad interaction on the tram. It reminded me that racism is still present on this side of the world as well. Two middle-aged men were harassing a black woman sitting on the seat in front of them, yelling in her ear and laughing. Additionally, when we got off they also got off at the same stop. They turned their attention to our group and continued to make loud noises while laughing. One of the German students told us they were probably racist, drunk, or both. We crossed the street to evade them and they stopped their antics and left.

We had a group dinner at an authentic Italian restaurant called Dragone and it was lovely. There is a picture of my Cacio e Pepe pasta, which I completely finished. Although, I didn’t get to try any table bread as it was gone before I sat down. In America I know they tend to refill before you ask, but I wasn’t sure if you got refills on bread here so I didn’t ask. Something else that stuck out to me was the fact that there was no chicken at the restaurant. I asked if I could get grilled chicken with my pasta, but it was not an option there, only beef and pork.