Day Four: Robots Making Robots

Today was a cool day, but not very touristy/travely. We left on the bus to Munich around 9:00, after having the same old breakfast at the hotel. The drive to Munich is not terribly long, but I still made time to sleep during it. We went to Munich for a presentation on BMW, not the factory tour. The presenters talked a lot about the business aspect of BMW, not so much the construction (which is what I'm more interested in). It lasted all morning, and I thought it was a bit dragged out. There was nothing to take pictures of, so I only have a few selfies from the bus...

Lindsey was genuinely concerned that she had somehow gotten a text from her mom while abroad...

And that's Jake.

We then took the bus back to Augsburg, where we had to have a very quick lunch. We all split up, and my group went to go get food called döner (pronounced dooner). It was almost like a gyro and I thought it was delicious. We ordered a "business döner" which is just without onions and stinky things so you can not smell bad after. I really liked that idea. I also thought it was funny it was called business while we were in business casual attire.

Christian, one of the German students, introducing me to döner

While we were eating döner, it was super hot and sunny out, and all of us were sweating like pigs (hot food probably wasn't the best choice). We sat at the outdoor tables, next to a man at a table who we thought had fallen asleep. Until an ambulance came and took him away. Our group of 10 (?) sat there and ate, watching the events unfold, but he was still alive and we think it might have had something to do with the heat. So that made the lunch interesting.

After lunch, we took the tram several stops past what we're used to taking it to KUKA's factory. KUKA is a company that has robots making robots. The robots being produced are sold to factories (like BMW) to help create more. KUKA had obviously done tours before, as we all got headsets and the tour guide had almost a memorized speech. We watched a presentation on the business of KUKA, then took a tour of the factory, which was awesome. It was a little scary because there were sparks flying and I'm surprised no one (especially me) got hurt. We watched robots moving around, building other robots. It was very bizarre at how gentle they were... It made me think of an animal of some sort because they moved so flawlessly. Almost all of the robots we saw were bright orange, KUKA's trademark color, although the color can be customized by the customer.

Program that day ended early, so a bunch of us went to two cool restaurants/bars. One was called Va Piano, which was a sort of serve yourself Italian place. The other was on the roof of a parking garage. It was beach themed, so there was sand all over the ground and beach chairs. It got really cold though, probably because we were so high up and it was windy, so we left early.

Veronica's Struggle of the Day:
While we were hanging out with the German students tonight, a few of the girls had to go to the bathroom. It was sort of far away so we lightly jogged, and managed to swallow a bug and start choking. That was fun. My excuse is that restaurants are not meant to be on roofs, but it certainly makes it a lot more interesting.