Day Two: Universität during Summer

We had no chance to sleep in this morning so we can adjust faster, so we met in the lobby at 8:00 and had the hotel breakfast. The breakfast was very sub par, in my opinion, which was pretty rough because we had it every morning of the trip.  There were these massive rolls that looked really good but were always kind of stale (really hard and crumby).  There was also some miscellaneous meat that I didn't eat the whole time there.  There was not much fresh fruit at this breakfast.  In fact, there really wasn't much fruit at all in Germany.  The most they had was canned fruit and some apples and pears.  The best two parts of the hotel breakfast were the Nutella travel packets and the multifruit juice.  The juice was like no other juice I've had, and I knew my mom would like it so it is one of her gifts from Germany.  Also, I thought I liked Nutella here, but I forgot how good European Nutella is. We used to get Nutella jars from our friends who had relatives in Holland, but recently we had been buying the American kind.  European Nutella is a lot more hazelnutty and generally just better. So I had WAY too many of those travel packets throughout the trip. A ridiculous amount (it turned to me eating the Nutella straight for breakfast).

We then took the tram to the Universität of Augsburg, where we had a little seminar, presented an introduction to our companies, and took a campus tour.  We had a big room in one of the university buildings were we were introduced to the Industry Analysis professor (the class that the German students were taking to be involved in Plus3).  Both he and Dr. Feick presented, then we split off into our predetermined company groups with both German and American students. My company was PPG (I was so excited because it was my first choice preference), with Erin, Alex and Sarah (Americans) and Lucie, Sophia and Thomas (Germans). We got really close as a group later, but this was our first time meeting. We went to one of the computer labs to work on our mini presentations that basically gave history, mission, and products of the company.  I struggled a lot of the time with signing into my google account because Google was mad at me for being in Germany... I ended up looking up the information on the PPG website while others worked on our Prezi.  We only had an hour to work which was really stressful but in the end, it ended up being alright.

After we watched the five company presentations, we went to lunch at the cafeteria called the Mensa. It blew my mind how pristine everything there was. The walls, floor and ceiling were bright white with colored accents in the table, chairs and counters.  This gave it a very clean look and feel, which I found continued throughout a lot of the country. We had a lot of options at the cafeteria, and I wanted to try something new because, well, Germany. So I picked up some sort of wrap that I had no idea what to expect it to contain, but it was just a chicken pot pie. The best/coolest part of the cafeteria was the trash system.  Hillary commented to me how engineer-y it was for me to point it out, but when I saw this, I blurted out how I thought it was immediately. I was so mesmerized that I forgot to take a picture, but I asked Lucie to the following day so I could show you guys.

So this system had a conveyor belt that you would place your plates and silverware on, which lead to a vertical box.  There was a series of lifts inside the box that raised the plates up to the ceiling, then it turned and continued in a tube along the ceiling.  This tube went straight into the wall, which I am assuming was the washing area. It seems lame but I thought it was cool... Not even sorry about it.

After lunch, we met up with a few students from the university who were not in Industry Analysis who showed us around campus. I thought the campus was beautiful.  If it were me, I would have preferred the campus to be more city-oriented (hence the reason I chose Pitt), but I really liked being on the Augsburg campus. It was even better because of the hot and sunny weather we had that day.

 

This area of the campus was easily comparable to Cathy's lawn or Solders and sailors lawn where students hung out.

Dr. Feick told us as soon as we arrived that the first part of car license plates stood for where the car was from, like how ours specifically say the stat that the car is from.

This piece of art turned into a sort of landmark for me when I was navigating the campus without German students

After the tour, we split into teams for the scavenger hunt and we were led by the German students. My team consisted of Erin, Lindsey, Alex, Sydney and myself. Our German leader was named Nicolai, who was in his last semester of university.  He studies (is basically done studying) industrial engineering, which is what I am doing! Turns out he spent all of last semester at Pitt doing a grad program there, so we were probably at the same football games or other events. He even knew someone who Sydney knew. I think its crazy how global paths can cross like that. Sophia, one of the students (in my PPG group) joined us as well. In a way, she was learning her way around, too, because she is a transfer student just for this semester.  I learned that semesters in Germany work a lot differently than those in America. Instead of having one 3 month long summer vacation, they have two holidays, one in the spring and one in the fall, each lasting about 2 months. So Sophia only started classes on this campus about a month ago and was still navigating campus.

We took the tram back into the city, and the first thing I saw at the tram station was a cigarette ad. I didn't realize what it was at first, since you don't see a lot of them around America. It featured a bunch of happy groomsmen laughing over a good smoke. I was very surprised by how much Germany encourages smoking.  I don't have a picture, but there are even cigarette vending machines on the streets.  I didn't like this poster because it ignores the health dangers of cigarettes. On another note, I would not want to be the bride to kiss the groom after this picture...

We went to the Town Plaza first on the scavenger hunt. There were a series of tasks to do and pictures to take to win. We were told to climb the Perlachturm and find the number of steps. So the team alternated counting steps and found 256 steps. Once we got to the top though, we asked the guy manning the booth and he told us 260. Regardless, that's a lot of steps.

We climbed the tower on the left, and we could see the two other towers from there

Here are some pictures from the top:

The rest of the scavenger hunt was like this:

We took a team selfie in front of the university's stadium, which you can see way in the distance

One of the tasks was posing like the statues in front of the church

We had to take a picture with one of the fountains, so we figured we'd just mimic it (we have the faces spitting water and all)

Our team was not worried about winning the scavenger hunt, so we took some time out and sat in the town plaza with pretzels from Wolfe. The cobble stone in the plaza was warm from the sun and really worn down so after talking to my team for a while... I managed to fall asleep... Jetlag, amiright?

The final destination of the scavenger hunt was Riegele, the local brewery and beer garden. On the way there, we picked up some gelato (which I also went to at least 6 times total). I was really surprised by how cheap the gelato cost! It was 1€ per scoop, and they had SO many flavors, hence the reason I kept returning.  I played it safe the first time with one that everyone suggested.

The beer garden was outdoors and they also served food. My whole team and I tried a drink called radler, which is lemonade and beer mixed.  It didn't mask the taste of the beer but it certainly made it better. We also lost the scavenger hunt. Well, we came in third. BUT we got gummies so everything was ok in the end :)

For dinner, we went to Dragone, which was an Italian restaurant (ironic because we're in Germany, but I guess we need a break from German food sometimes). I split a Hawaiian pizza and a caprese pizza with Sydney. The personal sizes were large but everyone else was eating a whole one, so when in Germany, I guess go for it.

Veronica's Struggle of Day:
My phone died early on in the day because I didn't charge it the night before (only 2 outlets in the room itself). I had the code to get into the room on my phone and did not have it memorized yet. So I had to sit in the hallway while my phone charged to 5% to turn it on and get in the room because I wasn't sure if my roommates were sleeping. Turns out they were both awake. When I got in bed, I laid down and smacked my head off the headboard really hard. Sam and Sarah laughed at me, then 30 seconds later, Sam proceeded to do the same thing. Maybe there were 2 strugglers today.



Sincerely Schussel