Conclusion

If there was one thing I did on my trip to Germany it was learn. A learned a little bit about the language like small words and phrases. I also learned about the cities we visited and the different landmarks in those cities from the many tours we had. These tours included both historical and cultural components, allowing me to develop a good feel of the place I was in. The tour I learned most from was likely the tour of the Dachau concentration camp. Along with the city tours, we had many company visits and factory tours, which involved quite a bit of information for us to learn. We visited 5 businesses, a research institute, and a hospital. We learned all about the history, performance figures, and products of the organizations. They told us about their processes, which we got to see firsthand during tours of the factories. We learned about how they work with other businesses to achieve common goals. They described to us what the future might look like for them and what kind of research they do to develop their ideas. I definitely learned the most at KUKA because it was the company that my group was assigned to do our group presentation on. Outside of these things scheduled by the program, I learned a lot from the German students. I got to learn how things are done over there and what life might be like as a German. I learned about our differences, but was surprised at how alike we were. We were able to develop strong friendships with them in two short weeks and I really enjoyed my time with them. Lastly, I learned about myself. I had never been outside the U.S. prior to the program and wasn’t sure how I’d like it. All in all, I would definitely say I made the right choice with the program.

May 15

Day 13 was our first and only free day of the trip. All of our planned activities had been completed, so how we would spend our day was up to us. I took advantage of my first opportunity to sleep in until about noon. However, I wanted to start my day right away, so that I would not waste my last day in Germany. A few of us decided to go to downtown Augsburg to get something to eat and explore the city a bit for one last time. Andrew and I decided to eat at a small bakery. We both got sandwiches (not the same one) and I didn’t think mine was anything special, but Andrew seemed to like his a lot. After lunch, we saw a few fellow Plus3 members and decided to join them for some shopping. We went around to a few stores looking for something to spend our remaining euros on. I didn’t find anything, but some of the others did. Some of us, including me, chose to go back to the hotel until meeting for dinner, while others chose to continue shopping for a little longer. For dinner, we went to an indoor biergarten. All of the American students and a few of the Germans were there for a last meal together. I wanted to get something German for my last dinner there and I went with the Jungschweinebraten. It was like a pork roast with a dumpling and it was delicious. After dinner, we didn’t want the day to end because we were not ready to leave. We decided to go to a bar to hang out for a little. It was a pretty cool place, it even had a Super Nintendo which was pretty awesome and of course I played it. After hanging out there for a couple hours we decided it was time to go back to the hotel and get some rest for our trip back home the following day. Unfortunately this meant it was time to say our goodbyes to the German students that were with us. It was really hard to leave the new friends we made because we didn’t know when or if we would be seeing them again. We thanked them for their kindness to us and headed back to sleep before the long day ahead of us. 

May 14

We were all excited to go to the Neuschwanstein Castle on Day 12 especially now that we no longer had to worry about our projects. We began our trip by leaving the hotel at about 9 and we arrived at about 10:30. We checked out the gift shop real quick before we began a long uphill walk. After a good bit we had finally made it to our first stopping point (slightly out of breath). There was a deck which had a pretty good view of the castle and we decided it was a good place to take a group picture. There was also a “bridge” on the other side where there was a beautiful view of the area. After getting a good look at the views we began our walk to our next stop. It was a bridge with the popular, recognizable view of the back of the castle. It was incredible to see how the castle looks over the cliffs. The only problem was that the bridge was very crowded and it kind of sketched me out (although it was definitely worth it). The nest thing on our agenda was the tour of the inside of the Neuschwanstein Castle. The journey there was rather long as well, but it was not without some pretty amazing views. The tour itself was rather interesting because of the stories about the king who had the castle built. He was definitely an intriguing man although rather crazy and his interest in swans was rather strange. The tour was actually surprisingly short and unfortunately we were not allowed to take any pictures. I was not too disappointed though because the inside was unimpressive compared to the outside of the castle. After the tour we were done at Neuschwanstein and the next thing was to go to the small town of Füssen for lunch. A few of us could not wait to eat so we grabbed some bratwurst sandwiches quickly. They were delicious and really hit the spot. Still hungry, we were ready to eat in Füssen. It was a cool, little city and we were excited to find a kebab place where we could get döner again. After Füssen we went to this cool church in the middle of nowhere. It was super nice and some great paintings and architecture. I just couldn’t believe it was so nice considering the surrounding area. After a long day we had planned a group dinner as our last planned activity. We went to the fancy Ratskeller and everyone was there, all the Germans and Americans together for the last time. It was really a bittersweet dinner. I had the schnitzel again and I thought it was better this time. Many of us didn’t want it to end, so we headed to the brewery to just hang out together. It was really a memorable day.

May 13

Day 11 was the day where we put all of the work we put in to the test. Our project group got together in the morning before our 12 o clock meeting at Mensa. We put the finishing touches on our presentation of KUKA and went through a couple of practice run-throughs to make sure we have the information and time down. After we got it all down, we headed for our lunch at Mensa. After we finished our brain food it was time for our presentations. Our group got lucky as we got to present first and get it out of the way. The presentation itself wasn’t too bad because I felt that I was well-prepared, but I was happy to have it over with and not have to worry about it anymore. All that was left for me to do was sit back and watch the rest of the groups present their projects. I was impressed that everyone seemed to have done their work and know their stuff really well. Also, the group seemed to very attentive as there were plenty of questions asked. We were all happy to be done and ready to eat some dinner. We went to a little place that is right by the University of Augsburg campus. It was there that I had schnitzel for the first time. It wasn’t exactly mind-blowing, but it was still very good. After a tough day, we were all ready for the rest of our stay in Germany to be like a vacation.

May 12

One the agenda for Day 10 was a trip to the city of Ulm. This was a very cool day from the beginning because we got to make the commute in a bullet train in order to make the trip quicker. The train accelerated slowly but eventually got up to 199 km/h. After about a 45 minute ride, we arrived in Ulm. Soon after we began our tour of the city. Once we got out of the main square, we got to go through some of the other city streets and see all kinds of old buildings and they were really cool and interesting. An especially interesting building was the old, crooked hotel. I was surprised that it was special enough that people would pay top dollar to stay there even though the floors are slanted and the rooms aren’t particularly nice. We also got to walk along the city wall and see the nice view, but the main attraction for our visit was the Münster tower. The plan was to walk through the main floor, which is a church and then go to lunch and climb the tower afterward. For lunch we went to a nice Italian restaurant. The food was delicious and I was surprised to learn that it was actually owned by Germans and not Italians. Many of us had decided it would be a good idea to try to eat a whole pizza before our climb of the tower. A few of us (not me) were able to complete both impressive tasks. After lunch most of us were able to make it to the top of the tallest church in the world. It was a tiring and scaring climb, but it was definitely worth seeing the view. After the tower, we had some free time to walk around the city and get some gelato. This marked the end of our time in Ulm, so we took the bullet train (which broke down for about a half hour) back to Augsburg for the night. For dinner, we revisited the biergarten and it was just as good as the first time. In summary, it was awesome to see Ulm as it was probably my favorite city to visit.

May 11

For the beginning of Day 9 we stayed in Augsburg with a short tram ride to the Fraunhofer Institute. While there, we learned all about the kinds of different research projects that they do there and the things they are working on. The Institute conducts research with many large companies in Augsburg including some of the companies we are looking at in our industry analysis. After this we got to take a tour of the institute to see what they do first-hand. After our tour we journeyed to the university for lunch at Mensa. Following our lunch we departed for Munich for our visit at Hospital University of Munich. We began our visit by listening to a presentation concerning some of the things that they are doing at the hospital. It was cool to see the advanced technologies that they have. After the presentation we got to take a tour of different parts of the hospital. After our tour of Siemens Healthcare and seeing the MRI machines, it was interesting to see them in an actual hospital being used. I would say that this “company” visit was one of the more interesting ones that we had. After the tour, we headed back to Augsburg for the day where we would be on our own for dinner this time. After arriving at the hotel, I rested and did a little bit of work before heading downtown for dinner. We went to a small kebab place to get some döner because everyone had been raving about it. After a few bites of the döner I had realized that it lived up to the hype. It is a type of Greek food with lamb meat; it is very similar so a gyro and it is delicious. We didn’t do much the rest of the night as we decided to just relax.

May 10

On Day 8 we had more of a somber day with our visit to Dachau and movie night. The first thing on the list was Dachau and we arrived there around 11. Our tour of the camp started shortly after. It was a very interesting experience to see what one of the camps was like for the first time. At first I was surprised at how big the camp was, but I realized that there were over 20,000 prisoners there and it didn’t seem so big. Walking around the camp and through the buildings was a fascinating yet saddening experience. It played such an important but tragic part of history. The tour was made even more educational thanks to our excellent tour guide. He was very knowledgeable and seemed to genuinely care about the information that he provided to us. The most interesting part and the part that I will always remember was walking through the gas chambers and crematorium. Even though the chambers in this camp had never been used, the feeling you got from walking through there was still very powerful. It was an was an eye-opening experience and it made you wonder how anything like that could ever happen. It was also interesting to see the bunker, so we could get a feel for what the rooms that held the special prisoners were like. The other activity scheduled was pizza and a movie called "The Lives of Others". The movie didn’t exactly lift us up as it wasn’t an incredibly happy one. However, I did think the movie was very good. I also got to learn from it because I knew nothing about the Stasi before watching. All in all, it wasn’t exactly “Sunday Funday”, but it was still a good day.