Day Three: Not The Grand Budapest Hotel

Today I woke up at 7:30 to go to SGL, which is about a half hour away. I think staying up for 30+ hours actually benefited me because I feel fairly rested and adjusted to this time zone. When we got to SGL, one of the company heads gave a PowerPoint presentation about SGL and carbon. He apologized that it had to do with chemistry and physics, so I'm pretty sure the business kids all tuned out for a lot of this presentation. I was very intrigued by it when he talked about the different forms of carbon and how SGL specifically uses different the forms. When he got to the point of talking about costs and profits and businesses tactics, I tried to follow but had a lot of trouble since I've only had engineering classes so far. My industrial (business) classes start this year, so maybe in a year from now I'll understand what he was talking about. Right after he spoke, 2 people from Human Resources gave a quick presentation on what they are looking for in employees, how to apply, and the benefits of being an employee. I appreciated this presentation a lot because it gave us an idea of what it would be like to work for them and made us think about being adults.

After the presentation, we split into 2 groups and took several tours. My favorite and first tour was of the factory that makes samples of carbon fiber for testing. It looked almost like the horse hair in a bow from a string instruments. It began white and went though a series of machinery that rolled it, exposed it to chemicals, heated it and colored it to stabilize it. This was my favorite part because I enjoy learning about machinery and gears and this had so many different stages that the carbon fiber was exposed to. That factory produced spools of black (almost) carbon fiber that would be sent to the testing labs, which we toured next.

We weren't allowed to take pictures of the factory so this is the result:

We took a tour of the fiber testing labs, which were a lot of people working in silence on various project, then we went to the show room. In the show room they had past carbon fiber creations, like a softball bat, an ion battery, motorcycle parts and a car door. The coolest part was a chair that was made out of concrete, however it was very light because it had carbon fiber.  I have a picture, but I can't publish it anywhere :(

SGL served us lunch, which was weird because they're a carbon company, but the food was good so who cares! I tried sparkling water for the first time there. Not a fan. It's just non-refreshing water. However, I was not a fan of their still water either. There is a difference between water without bubbles and stale water.  Their still water tasted stale, like it was tap water that has been sitting out overnight. Like the kind you put in your fish's bowl. Not really what I want to drink. Something else that I found peculiar is that the drinks were all served in glass bottles, even the water, but we learned from watching the German students that it is expected that you pour your botled drink into a glass.  I don't really understand that because all that does is make more dishes that have to be washed, since you could just drink out of the bottle, but this continued everywhere we went.

When we left, we had a few minutes at the hotel, where I Skyped with my family since I finally got my wifi working.  The first thing my mom asked about was how efficient everything was. I showed her the shower to try to debunk her theory but I realized that the shower is the only bad thing I had come across.

We went to the golden room in the Town Hall to listen to a woman talk about immigration. I, among other students, assumed she would talk about the current refugee situation; however, she only discussed the history of immigration patterns. I thought this was kind of an unnecessary part of the trip, but I found it interesting when she talked about Jewish contingent refugees because I had never heard of such a thing. 

This next part was very interesting, but I really wish we knew what to expect. We were told nothing about it except that we were touring the "Grandhotel," which we all assumed was some sort of historical hotel. It was quite the opposite. After several minutes of being at the hotel, I found out that it was a hotel for refugees. As soon as you walked in, there was a coffee booth, which we found out is how they raise money. The weird part is that there were no prices for anything on the menu; they let you decide how much you want to pay.

Our tour guide was a very interesting character. He was almost a modern day hippie, with big curly hair in a pony tail, a goatee and some rockin' shoes. He spoke broken English, but Sonja helped him out with English words he couldn't think of. He knew a lot about the hotel and was very informative.

In the lobby of the hotel itself, the walls were lined with pictures of what I assumed are past/current guests. The pictures had an Andy Warhol effect, with different colored backgrounds and the subjects interacting with each other.  One of the first things our tourguide told us was that everything in the hotel was donated. I thought the lighting fixtures were the coolest part with this in mind.

I found out that there are 3 parts of the Grandhotel: 1) The hotel 2) The refugee housing 3) The hostels

In the hotel portion, there are 12 rooms that are open for anyone to stay in. They were no ordinary hotel rooms. Each room is designed and decorated by an artist, most of who were extremists trying to make a statement. We only got to see a few of the rooms, and I thought a lot of them were pretty creepy.  They felt undone, rundown, and eery. I took the most pictures of the bright pink one, which I thought had the happiest vibe.

Along the tour, we stopped on a balcony on the top floor, which had a great view of the city:

From left to right: Erin, me, Lindsey, Alex, Sydney, Sam, Alex

We never really saw the refugee portion of the hotel because it's not really something to show off. They lived in the back of the hotel in several hallways. There are 65 refugees who can live there, but the tour guide was very strict about not calling them refugees. He said it dehumanizes them, and they are really just people, guests.

My favorite part of the tour was the hostel part. Each room had a crazy cool theme: jungle, art, child. It was really cool that we had the chance to go in and look. I thought it was awesome that all of the floors of the rooms matched the themes. For example, in the jungle room, the ground was rocky and lumpy, like in nature. I took some pictures of the artsy room:

The jungle room (someone was staying in it at the time so it was awkward to walk in and be taking pictures)

I loved that everyone in the hotel has to eat dinner together (or at least the refugee guests). It creates a sort of family feel at the hotel, where everyone knows everyone else. The hallways were also painted in fantastic ways, and I think soon all the whitespace in the hotel will be gone.

The kitchen was in the basement, with a restaurant attached. The restaurant had the same pick-your-own price system as the coffee booth. The kitchen staff were all laughing and joking, acting like a family, which I loved. The only thing I wish was different about the hotel tour is that we had some kind of warning. I felt like we were being paraded through, showing off to those less fortunate. If they don't want to be dehumanizing the refugees, then why show off their living quarters like zoo animals?

After the hotel, we had dinner on our own, and the German students suggested a classic Bavarian place in the city. It was in the basement, under a bunch of stores, and the waitstaff word tradition clothing and spoke very little English. After waiting forever for English menus because none of us could decipher the German ones, I got "schnitzel and grandma's potato salad" with a lager beer.  It tasted so good, but I could feel myself getting unhealthier the more I ate.

 After dinner, Katie, Sydney, Raegan and I went to get gelato. It became a regular thing. We then worked in the town plaza on our blogs (I couldn't because I didn't have a laptop with me... biggest regret). The town plaza had wifi, which was awesome (and surprisingly high speed)! On the way home, none of us were looking at the train stops and we missed our hotel stop. It only happened once to teach us a lesson for the rest of the trip. We got off at the next stop away, which felt like it had been a thousand miles. We had to wait 20 minutes for a train back, and it was the very last one because they stop running at midnight. We got really lucky. Except for the fact that we all had to pee really badly and were stuck at a station in the middle of nowhere...

Veronica's Struggle of the Day:
During lunch, I dropped food on my shirt and wanted a wet napkin to wipe it up. I grabbed the nearest bottle of water and napkin and flipped the bottle upside down with the napkin, forgetting the water was carbonated. The carbonation in the water caused the water to squirt everywhere all over everyone. But wait! There's more. While we were on the balcony at the Grandhotel, there was a stool at shin level that I didn't see and walked straight into it, leaving me with two bleeding shins...