Day 4- Wednesday, May 11th

          4 days in and life is pretty great right now. I love it here everything is exciting, beautiful and the people are super nice. We started our day at BMW in Munich for a company lecture on the innovation and focus for the future of their products (they focused a lot on their I series I3 and I8.) I really liked the environment that the BMW gave as a company. It was really intriguing to see the extreme abundance of BMWs around the company site, almost every car (employee’s cars) were BMWs.

            After the company visit we headed back to Augsburg for lunch where some of the German students took us to try Döner, because we heard from the students last year that it was a must have. Basically it is the same thing as a gyro, but it was even better since I was eating it in Germany! It turned out to be a really nice day and we sat outside to eat.

            Next we headed to KUKA, which was close to the city center just about a 10-minute tram ride. Once we got to the building we started off by taking a tour of the facility, so far this was my favorite tour. KUKA is a company that makes robots. How you ask? KUKA makes robots to make other robots to sell to various companies.  I thought this was so cool, we literally saw the creation of a robot! Also it was mind blowing to see how many parts and steps really go in to the production, especially because different companies want different colors and sizes. After our tour, we had a lecture and in the beginning they talked a lot about where different robots are used and I thought that was really eye-opening as well, because I never really realized that. Also KUKA talked about how robots are starting to come into the medical field with helping surgeons with tools, which I thought was insane how it can be trained to do specific tasks.

            After KUKA, we went back to the hotel to change and then we were on our own again of dinner and we went to an Italian restaurant that the German students recommended. At the restaurant a man asked me if I was from America, and it turned it out he was actually a professor from Indiana University and he was here with his students which was pretty neat to hear.

            Lastly to finish off the night, we all went as a group to a “sky beach” which is on the top of a parking garage. It was so cool because you were pretty high up in the city center and you could see the sunset. Overall a long, but informational day, can’t wait for Nuremberg tomorrow!