It’s been several days since I arrived back in the U.S. I kept putting off writing this last post because I felt that if I wrote it, it would assert such a degree of finality that I was not prepared to handle. I missed Germany, I missed the group, and I missed the adrenaline rush…

Friday, May 18 Today was the last day of the Plus3 Germany program, and we had it all to ourselves. There were no planned group activities for this day, and 14 of us actually wound up going to Salzburg, Austria for the day. We met in the lobby at 7:45 to walk to the Augsburg…

Thursday, May 17 With the looming cloud of the final presentations behind us, it was time to have some fun again. We skipped the hotel breakfast in favor of a traditional Bavarian breakfast in the nearby small town of Baindlkirch. The restaurant we entered was not like any we had experienced thus far: it was…

Wednesday, May 16 We had a later start than normal today, but the first and only activity for that day would not take place until 5:30 PM: the final presentation. The majority of us went to the university, first to eat lunch in the Mensa, then to work on last-minute details of the presentations that…

Tuesday, May 15 This morning we hopped on the street car at around 9:30 to go and take a tour of Hörauf & Kohler. This company specializes in injection molding and makes plastic parts for the automobile industry. The person who would normally give the tour in English was not there, so we had a…

Monday, May 14 This morning at 9:15 we left the hotel to catch a street car to the University, where we listened to a talk about German politics. The presentation was very interesting because it brought up many connections between current political issues in America and in Germany. One main theme is this concept of…

Sunday, May 13 This morning we visited the memorial site of the Dachau concentration camp. This was the first of the Nazi concentration camps to be established. Although it was not intended to be used to carry out systematic mass executions, it served as a model for future camps that were constructed in other parts…

Saturday, May 12 Today we spent the entire day in München, but the story of how we got there could almost be this entire blog post. So today there was a soccer game in Munich, and as a result the train was extremely crowded with fans going to watch. When our group got on, we…

Friday, May 11 This morning we walked as a group to the Augsburg Hauptbahnhof and took a train to a town called Ulm. Running on 3.75 hours of actual sleep from the previous night, I was not thrilled to find out that our first destination was the tallest church tower in the world. And it…

Thursday, May 10 After a late night last night, getting up early this morning to leave at 7:30 was a little more difficult than usual. But it was worth it, because we were visiting the castle Neuschwanstein (directly translated to “new swan stone”), which was one of three palaces built by König Ludwig der Zweite,…

Wednesday, May 9 Today, we visited Continental, which is a company that is best known for its rubber and tires, although we would soon find out that there is much more to the company than that! We were warmly welcomed by the company and led into a conference room that contained gift bags at every…

Tuesday, May 8 Today was a very long day! At around 8:15 we took the bus to visit SGL, a company that specializes in manufacturing carbon fiber for auto parts, making it a Tier 2 supplier to the auto industry. We first listened to a company representative give a presentation about the science behind their…

Monday, May 7 Today we went to the University of Augsburg and met the German students who would be working with us in our company groups. Our first task was to create an initial presentation to introduce the rest of the students to our company. From that point, we had 90 minutes to prepare something!…

Sunday, May 6 Wir sind endlich in Deutschland angekommen! After a long night flight and a six-hour time jump, we hit the ground running. Our rooms were not yet ready, as we expected with our morning arrival, so we used an office room on the first floor of the hotel to stow our luggage while…

My name is Kayla Carlson and I am a first-year student at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering. In June of 2017 I graduated from Pennsbury High School, which is located in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. When I am not at school, I live with my family in a suburban area near the city…