The past 12 days have felt like a blip and an eternity at the same time. And I think that feeling is a testament to how many memories were made and how fun this experience was. The German students when above and beyond to connect with us and really wanted to become our friends. I…

Today. we were given free reign to do whatever we wanted within reason. Ryan and I went on an early train to Innsbruck using a cheap region pass and while it took long it saved us money. Other people took later trains and showed up around the same time while spending much more money. Innsbruck…

Finally it’s time to get our presentations done, the culmination of this entire program. As I an presenting on Audi, the only car company in the program, I felt as through my part was pretty intuive as I was just using CASE analysis for the present and future goals of Audi. When we presented, the…

Today was a fairly straightforward day that was a relief for some. We visited Grob, a robotics manufacturer that has been engaged in markets all across the globe. We entered the factory campus with little expectations, but left thoroughly impressed. The buildings were clean an modern, and upon entering the presentation room we were offered…

In the opinion of everyone there, the beginning of today was overly long. That’s not just coming from me as an impatient college student, but Phil and Larry both agreed it dragged on a bit. We started at around 8:30am at the Hoerbiger site in Schongau, a quick valve factory tour (and a really cool…

The structured part of today was short but on a very heavy topic. An hour drive to a village outside Munich, and we arrived at the memorial for the Dachau concentration camp. Dachau was a work camp used for political prisoners, not used for extermination on purpose. For the 12 years it operated the conditions…

I’ve been looking forward to today all week. An early wake up is always a win, but more than that, we were going to the largest city in Bavria. A 30 minute train ride and we ived right into a two hour guided city tour. I appreciated how thee city acknowledges it’s dark past relating…

Our earliest start by far. I woke up at 5am to get ready to be out of the door by 6:30am. A little over an hour drive and the landscape changed drastically. From flat farms, to hills and the Apls slowly coming into focuses from blurry backdrops before. After a long wait admiring the view,…

Today was a light day – and I think all of us on the trip needed it. A leisurely meeting time of 8:30am was not used for sleeping in as most of us had been out late the night before hanging out with the German students. The exhaustion in the air was palpable. A quick…

Today we got up early to head to Nuremberg and visit a MAN truck factory. Nuremberg was heavily bombed in the second World War so I was interesting to see what was rebuilt and what survived the bombing. There were old castle wall and original timber buildings still standing from 500+ years ago. It’s amazing…

Today we took the tram to the University of Augsburg. It’s a very green campus with some mildly brutalist architecture. It’s a very new university beginning in the 1960s. We began with a presentation from a automotive Bloomberg journalist discussing the future of German car manufactures. Afterwards we separated into our company groups (I’m Audi)…

I’ve learned my lesson with jet lag. Saying awake, even if on a few hours of low quality sleep from the plan ride over, can bring with it a lot of mixed emotions especially in a foreign country. There were two hours of free time before we could check into our hotel, we had some…