This morning, we left Bilbao after a week. It was sad to leave our hotel, which was very nice, as well as have our last breakfast at that hotel. We started the day early, with a trip to Tekniker, an engineering company that helps startups. They help anyone with an idea make it a reality, and they build the actual product for them. This involves products in all areas, from space to biomedical. While we saw some examples, we unfortunately can not speak of them, as they are other people’s intellectual property.

The building itself was huge, and all the way up on a mountain. It had beautiful views of the landscape nearby, and it was roughly 45 minutes from Bilbao.

At the end of our tour, I asked two University of Cincinnati students about their co-op experience so far. They had great things to say about it, with long weekend breaks to visit other places throughout Europe. They also were working on developing two biomedical products with Tekniker. They commute from Bilbao every day, which is a decent bit of time. This is something I definitely want to look into doing in the future, whether it would be here or something similar in Pittsburgh.

After our visit, we got to our new hotel in Gernika. It is a much smaller town, but it has a lot of history and importance. In Gernika, one of the first civilian bombings ever occurred, which is horrifying. There are also a lot of historical places to see here, one of which we saw today.

We visited Casa Punta in the afternoon, which is a government building. It is very old and beautiful, and there is a lot of importance within it. Every Spanish king had to go there before ruling over the basque region, and stand under a tree. This tree is still there today, and while it is just a stump, it was cool to see something all these kings had stood under at one point. Overall, Gernika is very cool place, and I can’t wait to see more.