Author: Stevo Baas

Disclaimer: I also am writing about Mercedes-Benz, so if you’ve read other students blogs on this you probably won’t read anything new here. If not, I guess you might as well read this one.

Here we go. Today we had the opportunity to tour the Mercedes-Benz manufacturing in Bremen, Germany. I’ve never considered myself very in to cars, so I probably wasn’t as excited about this visit as some other students on the trip. However, as soon as we stepped into the the visitors center I was fascinated. From the energetic tour guide we had and the car models they had on display, to the massive manufacturing buildings and amazing robots that we saw in action, the 2 hours we spent touring te facities flew bye for me. 

As we walked through the facility it was incredible to watch the robots work on all the cars. I always imagined that robots at these places were designed to make one type of car, but these robots were able to work on parts for 10 different car models interchangeably. 

Some of the quick stats that stood out to me over the tour were that this facility:

• produces 1,800 cars a day and 420,000 cars year
• Has 12,000 employees and a ridiculous amount of robots (that’s a lot of people and things to keep in order).
• Produces cars for over 200 other countries 

By the end of the tour I had decided that this was my favorite of the tours we had. Maybe it’s because we were able to sleep in today, so I had some extra energy, but I think it had more to do with the overall tour experience. Mercedes-Benz is really a very cool place to tour and if you find yourself around a manufacturing facility I’d recommend giving it a look.

Looking forward to getting back to America!

Here in Germany one of the major differences from America is how the Germans handle crosswalks. In America, it’s pretty common to pick a gap and just get across as quick as you can even if the light on the crosswalk says not too (oh my bad mom, I’m just talking about other people I’ve observed…. not me). The Germans however, are very different in the fact that they will wait until the crosswalk tells them it’s okay to cross. It doesn’t matter if there’s not a car on the street, most of them won’t move until the “walk” signal is flashed.

I’m not sure why this is a big thing for the people of Germany, but they even have stores across the country that sell merchandise with the “Ampelmann” logo peppered on to their various offerings. For those of you wondering what/who “Ampelmann” is, he’s the symbol that comes up on the light when it’s okay too cross a street. While this cultural difference can at times be frustrating, at the very least it’s a good reminder to us that it’s okay to slow down, take a deep breath, and appreciate the moment in busyness of our daily lives.

This afternoon we visited the historical town of Heidelberg and the famous castle where the Heidelberg Catechism was written. Unlike Paris and some of the other German towns we’ve visited, it was easy for us to communicate with the locals in Heidelberg due to the American military presence in the city since the end of WWII. As a result, many locals have an excellent understanding of the English language and were more than happy to communicate with us in that way. On our tour of the castle we learned that it had suffered a great deal of damage in the 17th century due to an attack by the French. It suffered more damage again later in the 17th century due to a pair of lightning strikes. Nonetheless, the Heidelberg Castle is still a marvelous sight to behold and was a special experience for our group to visit the place where such an important document in the Protestant faith was drawn up.

Before and after our tour of the castle, we had a number of hours to explore the city and pop into the shops and restaurants that make up the city’s culture. Two other students and I used this time to hike up to a tower just outside the city. The 2 mile hike provided me with a great opportunity to get to know these guys who I didn’t know very well before this trip and it gifted us with an incredible view of the city and the castle. After a couple days in the busy city of Paris, the hike to the tower was a much needed change of pace and will go down as one the highlights of my trip.