Presentation day was exhausting, but I felt that my group did very well presenting BMW. It was definitely a humbling experience having the presentation be shredded by some questions, but I think my group pulled through in the end. We practiced profusely before going up, but we could not stop our YouTube video showing an…

Second round of Munich. Without Mattias who took us around, we would have been completely lost. We saw the English Gardens and took a different spin on Munich than the last time we were there. It was nice to not have an itinerary for the day and just walk around at our own pace. It…

The thing I will miss the most about Germany is the people I have grown close to over these last two weeks. The familiarity. Waking up every morning and experiencing a completely different culture for the first time with people has a way of bringing them closer together. Even meeting the German students and becoming…

Long hike, short tour, construction going on, 5/10 would do again. Although I am being harsh, seeing Neuschwanstein Castle in person was a sight to see. Obviously it was enormous and very expensive to build, but it was incredibly ornate on the inside. Even the bed frame in the bedroom took months to carve out…

BMW Headquarters was heaven. So many beautiful cars and I could actually go inside some of them. Rolls Royce, BMW i8, the list is infinite. At some points I was a little too excited to be there. Good thing I didn’t care! This was the moment I had been waiting for since I applied to…

What struck me the most about Dachau was the dichotomy of the somber emptiness of a concentration camp, and the uncaring aspect of nature that surrounded it. With all the death, disease, torture, and all around unspeakable things that occurred at this concentration camp, the birds still sang. The flowers surrounding the perimeter still bloomed….

There is no other way to put it: Munich was amazing. I appreciated how different Munich felt as compared to Augsburg. I considered it to be more of a “city” than Augsburg because of the size, number of people (mostly tourists like us), and sheer amount of over-priced stores. It was great getting a guided…

Today we had two sets of companies “visits.” The first came in the form of SGL: The Carbon Company. Seeing carbon fiber in its production state was unreal, especially since it is in all of my favorite supercars. I never knew that carbon fiber started off as white and then goes through a burning process…

The Weisswurst and Bavarian Pretzels we had for breakfast were not only delicious, but also essential to getting a true German experience (as I was told). Unfortunately, the cost of having a great breakfast was a long drive to the middle of nowhere to a garage that just-so-happened to sell some amazing German sausages. If…

The first part of the day we went to Hirschvogel. This company is situated at the beginning stages of the supply chain, focusing mostly on forging, so it was a different perspective than I was used to. A key focus of this visit was about how the company was not there to make money for…

Today we had our first company site visit: Faurecia. Although the actual site visit was very technical, the business aspects were very fascinating. Specifically, the intense competition involved in this level of the supply chain was the most interesting part. For one exhaust system, European regulator rules force two competitors to work on the system…

If you ever need a way to get people to get to know each other, throw ‘em together and tell them they have a graded presentation due in an hour. And that is how I met Tobi, Simon, and Lea. It did not take very long, but yes, we already had work assigned in the…

Sleep is a word I have not heard in a while. Our first “day” of our trip was mostly spent in the air and in airports. As preparation for such an intensive journey, I did what any reasonable person would do: pull an all-nighter. So, instead of getting plenty of sleep to be ready for…

Hi all! My name is Matthew Jones and I am a freshman in the College of Business Administration at the University of Pittsburgh. Currently, I am majoring in finance and global management with minors in economics, political science, and Chinese. I have lived in Marlboro, New Jersey all my life, but I thought it was…