We went to breakfast at 7 and I stayed true to my word yesterday about taking too much food. Today I had a cup of yogurt and another turkey and cheese sandwich and a cup of earl grey tea.
We had to get on the bus at 8:15 and it took us to school. Today it really was taking us to school because it was lecture day. We gathered in a small conference room and our first lecture was on the difference in job structure here in Germany. Germany is a very uniform country. They value engineer jobs above all others. There's a reason Germany makes sweet cars and not high fashion. They also aren't known for their consumer goods and can't make cheap items well because the country produces such high quality goods.
It wasn't surprising to be told this but it's interesting to reflect on. Europeans have a hard time accepting others as their own. You could have Italian parents and be born in Germany and live your whole life there. That doesn't make you an Italian German. It makes you Italian. America has no problems accepting people as their own. Without getting too flag waving patriotic, I think this is one of my favorite things about America.
I liked our first speaker but I noticed Maria, sitting next to me, kept nodding off. I was hoping our speaker wouldn't notice but how can you not when someone in a group of 14 people is sleeping?! After our speaker finished, everyone took a coffee break. I just sat in the room waiting for the next speaker.
Our next speaker was the man who spoke to us on our first day about Aalen University. He talked to us about Human Resource Management in Germany. I kinda knew most of what he told us. Germans get more vacation times, work less hours, have health care... They're also big on Trade Unions. The biggest difference between German human resources and American is that Germany is very focused on protecting the individual employee. American is focused on protecting the rights of an individual. That means you have less control over them and they have less security. It's a trade off.
When he was done we all talked about how half the people in our group had nodded off at one point while the other half kept trying to discreetly wake them up. I don't know why everyone is so tired. Not to brag but I totally will, I technically got the least amount of sleep with three hours and I'm doing fine. Then again, that's not foreign to me.
We broke for lunch! I just noticed but the cafeteria's food selection is really small. It might be 1/6 (at least) the size of BHSU's cafeteria's selection. At Aalen university you have 3 or 4 meals you can choose from, or you can get a plate and fill it up with random fixings. The random fixings is like 1 soup of the day, a couple different chilled pastas, some type of meat, and salad. You have several different sodas, a couple juices, and water to drink. Every drink is fizzy.
I was feeling me some fried foods and had 1.5 mozzarella stick, a handful of fries, 1 fish stick, 1 fried mini spring roll, a fried meat thing, and a side salad.
Couldn't find ketchup so I ate this pink sauce
It was all deicious. Everything tasted better than a fried cafeteria food you would get back home. I ate everything like a little piggy and didn't offer anyone a fry.
Clean Plate Club represent
I forgot to mention, or maybe it was a given, but they pay for my lunch. The only thing I pay for is my dinner and not the dinner we had for the Welcome night with the maybe raw salmon. The Business program at my school is paying for everything else except our plane tickets. I'm actually flying back on the tickets I bought with my Irish group (it didn't cost anything to customize your plane ticket to extend your stay an extra 3 weeks). I don't pay to get into museums or go on tours either. All I pay for is my dinner. That is seriously amazing.
After lunch we took a short 20 minute walk to the Carl Zeiss Vision center! They make eyeglasses and lab glasses and camera lens.
You don't need glasses to see I'm adorable.
They were so soo nice and welcoming. We were given name tags and headphones which were to come in handy later when we toured the factory. Apparently it was going to be a little noisy.
I'm kind of a big deal.
We sat in a meeting room and talked about being far sighted versus near sighted and how eyes work and how when you get older why you start to need reading glasses. Then it was time to do some touring! No pictures were allowed but I'm pretty good at explaining things.
We walked through the factory and it was like with the underwear yesterday. Logistics stuff. We saw eye glasses being made and that was cool and we saw them being lazer stamped and that was cool too. I liked it! Watching all the machinery is very memorizing. I don't wear glasses and learned something. For like $100 or whatever you can get your lens dipped in this anti reflection paint. Someone had their glasses made that way and another person didn't so they stood next to each other and there was a huge difference. The one that didn't have the anti reflection stuff was reflecting all the light. It was new to me.
Anyways, it was all very cool. It wasn't loud but it was noisy and we had these dorky headphones to wear while our tour guide had a speaker he talked into. The headphones hurt, they're like stethoscopes. I didn't wear mine and just stood really close to the guide to hear him.
When we were done they gave us sodas and lattes and espresso shots. One of the ladies working there even baked us a cake, can't remember the German name but it's a bunt cake. It was so sweet! They were so nice and just very kind people.
Look at my light coca cola and homemade cake and headphones
It's kind of funny. Of the 14 people in our group, all four professors or "grown ups" wear glasses. That leaves 10 students. Of those 10, 3 wear glasses leaving 7 who don't. Of those 7, 4 wear contacts. Only 3 of us didn't wear glasses OR contacts. I feel like I have a super power.
While leaving, this damn company had to kick us in the hospitable balls one last time. They gave us goodie bags.
Swiggity swag, what's in the bag?
We left at 4:30 and went back to campus. At 5 we had our last lecture of the day. It was on Trademark Protection in Europe. The general population of my group was very very sleepy. I sat away from everyone like the loner kid because I didn't want any of that sandman sleep catching me.
Our speaker talked about the Paris Convention and TRIP Agreement. I didn't really learn anything new, having learned about trademarks in Business Law. I did find it interesting that Germany basically doesn't give a shit about prior rights when it comes to trademarking which is so not the case in America.
I also learned that you can get a German Trademark but be rejected for a Community Trademark (which is basically a trademark recognized in most of Europe). There was a German company called Paletteu Kirsten and they trademarked the name "Paki" as it's the first 2 letters the company name. If you speak English, you know the word Paki is used in a derogatory sense to describe people from Pakistan. So when this company, who had the German trademark, applied for the Community one they were rejected because people would find that name morally unsound or offensive.
Other than that it was kind of the same stuff. I would look at my peers every now and then and people were seriously dozing off. I've fallen asleep in class before and I know the struggle. When we were done the people who fell asleep felt really bad about it. I told them "It happens." and we moved on.
By now it was 6:45 and we were done for the day! A group of us walked into town to find dinner and a grocery store. Maria texted Austin and invited him to hang out (she says hang out, I say it was 'You have free time, be our tour guide'). Austin is a super cool guy but I didn't want to have to follow him around in our group. Our group is fucking loud and annoying. Also I have no patience so maybe they're normal and I'm a bitch. Someone made a joke about us drinking last night and the girl who was with us last night (not Maria but the newbie drinker one) yelled something back. It wasn't angry sounds, all happy and excited and smiley sounds.
"Be quiet..." I warned her. I told her she was being that loud obnoxious American that everyone hates and for gods sake do not fucking yell in the middle of the sidewalk. In hindsight, this might have been mean of me. I also don't care. Aalen is a very quiet town. People are chill and quiet and talk softly to their friends. And then we come storming in as this large group and someone is yelling to their buddy 4 feet away how they were "NOT THAT DRUNK LAST NIGHT I WAS JUST HAVING FUN!"
After I snapped at her everyone else stayed more in line as well. Austin found us and took us all to what he called "German fast food". It was this Turkish restaurant with no seating because it was so small. Austin ordered for us and we had roasted lamb sandwich on pita bread. They were cutting the meat in front of us. It was so fresh.
Meat being sliced up in the background
So this is love...
It was delicious! Here's some history: Germany has a lot of Turkish immigrants. After WW2 when all the men were six feet under, people from Turkey came to Germany to rebuild. This sandwich was so good and I had no issues with the meat. When I got to the onion, however, I had to keep pretending I was dropping some on the ground by accident. There was way too much onion.
I ate it all and had some regrets. It was a lot of food and we had more walking to do. With a belly full of Turkish Subway we walked to the grocery store. I had wanted to get some fresh fruit for snacks.
The others wanted some cheap liquor so I followed them to the beer. The beer was so cheap I had to take a picture.
.70 a beer!? What the fricky fracky? I helped Maria pick out a case while the others got a mini keg. I grabbed a bottle of vodka for later.
I wanted Doritos and we found some in the chip aisle. They only had two flavors. One of the flavors was called "Cool American" which is their cool ranch flavor. That was funny to me so I grabbed a bag.
Ian souvenir!
I also grabbed another Kinder Egg and a bar of chocolate. Milka chocolate bars are everywhere I noticed but I'm not sure I've seen one in America because I didn't recognize them when we were in Ireland. Anyways I grabbed a Chips Ahoy Milka as well.
My stuff cost me 17 euros, not bad. We walked back to the bus station and had to wait 15 minutes for it. While we were waiting, I saw the dean coming over to join us. I waved and she waved back then I remembered what we had just bought.
"Oh shit." I said, and discreetly started moving around items in my bag. Everyone else did the same and when she came over I don't think she noticed. There are no rules about us drinking. However, this is a school trip and the school is paying for so much. It's frowned upon I would say. But so is wandering off by your own. Some frowning doesn't bother me.
The bus rides cost 2.20 euros. We got back to our room at 9 and I took a bath. My body smells a bit like chlorine and my hands smell like onions pretty bad. When I was out my hands still smelled like onions. My life is a real struggle sometimes.
By the time I was done doing blog stuff it was almost 1. What the hell time?! I have to wake up in 5 hours and go to Stuttgart and look at cars. I seriously need to get it together and start going to sleep at midnight because this is annoying. Speaking of annoying, I forgot to buy fruit at the store. I bought stupid vodka and not strawberries and bananas like I wanted. What the hell Calla?!
It's hard to find decent German songs to end with.
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