There is a view from the Marienbrücke bridge at Neuschwanstein that I do not think I will ever fully get out of my head. Standing there, looking out at a 19th century castle framed by the Bavarian Alps, surrounded by people who two weeks earlier were strangers, after a week of factory floors and conference…

Except I am not heading home. Not yet anyway. While the rest of the group navigated customs, caught their connecting flights, and made their way back to Pittsburgh, I said my goodbyes at the hotel and waited for my dad to arrive in Munich. What followed was something I had been quietly praying for, for…

After two weeks of schedules, bus departures, factory tours, and presentation deadlines, Friday had no agenda. Just Munich, three good friends, and nowhere we had to be. We had already seen Munich as a group the previous Saturday, but experiencing it without a guided tour or a meeting point to return to is a completely…

Presentation day. After two weeks of factory tours, city walks, research sessions, and late-night prep, it all came down to this. I started the morning at the cafeteria and then met up with my group. By that point, we had rehearsed enough times that everything felt locked in. We knew our material cold, and we…

The last factory visit of the trip, and Audi made sure it did not go out quietly. The tour itself was unlike anything we had done over the past week and a half. Each of us was handed an earpiece and a modified smartphone that played videos synchronized to what we were seeing on the…

Tuesday brought us to Regensburg for a visit to Aumovio, a company that develops the internal display technology and circuit board systems that go inside modern vehicles. On paper, it sounds like one of the less glamorous stops on the itinerary. In practice, it was more interesting than I expected, though for different reasons than…

After the heaviness of Dachau the day before, Monday felt like the group collectively needed to just keep moving. A long bus ride to Nuremberg, neon safety vests, earpieces, and another factory floor. We were back in it. MAN Truck & Bus was a perfectly fine company visit, and I want to be fair about…

There is no version of this post where I can be glib or casual, so I will not try. Walking into Dachau on Sunday morning, I thought I was reasonably prepared for what we would see. I grew up learning about the Holocaust in school like most American kids, going through the curriculum probably half…

Munich was a day I had been looking forward to since before we even left Pittsburgh. My family is originally from just outside the city, so this was not just another stop on the itinerary for me. It was personal. And while Munich absolutely delivered, it was also different from what I had imagined in…

After the most steps I have probably taken in a single day in my life, Friday was exactly what I needed. I slept in, took my time getting ready, and felt like an actual human being again for the first time since arriving in Germany. After the relentless pace of the week, having a morning…

If I had to pick one day from this entire trip that I would relive start to finish, Thursday might already be it. After two days of factory floors, conference rooms, and information sessions, getting on a bus headed into the Bavarian Alps felt like coming up for air. The drive alone was worth it….

I will be upfront about this one: I was not feeling well on Wednesday. Whatever combination of jet lag, a developing cold, a packed schedule, and the previous late night caught up with me, I showed up to KUKA running on empty and genuinely struggling to be present. So take my impressions of the day…

An early 7:00 a.m. departure meant we were on the bus to Munich before most people would even think about starting their day. Since BMW is the company my group is presenting on, I was paying close attention from the moment we arrived, taking notes throughout both the presentation and the tour. We kicked off…

Our first full day in Augsburg started with breakfast at the hotel before making our way over to the University of Augsburg for the first time. Having visited quite a few universities across Europe during my time studying in London, I was curious to see how a German public university compared to what I had…

Departure day came with a bit of an extra wrinkle for me. Unlike the rest of the group, who were leaving straight from Pittsburgh, I actually had to fly from Newark down to Pittsburgh the night before just to turn around and fly back through Newark on the way to Munich. Slightly ridiculous in hindsight,…

After touching down in Munich and clearing customs, the first thing that struck me about Germany was how calm everything felt. Having spent last spring studying abroad in London and traveling through eleven different countries across Europe, I thought I had a pretty good feel for what arriving somewhere new looks like. But Germany was…

My name is Sam Goddard. I graduated from high school in Newtown, PA, but I moved all over the place during my childhood, in places like Princeton, Rumson, and Freehold, NJ, as well as Boca Raton, Florida. Now I am a junior here at Pitt, dual majoring in Finance and Accounting with a minor in…