Day 5: May 12th

We started today really early, leaving around 7 am to take a three hour bus ride up to Kronach to visit LEAR.  Although I slept for most of the drive, when I was awake I noticed how breath taking the German countryside was.  As we drove along the highway we passed miles and miles of open fields and farm fields, and in the background were huge, rolling hills.

The view from the highway

The LEAR company visit was interesting, but very long.  Over 4 hours, they gave us a few presentations, then took us on tours of the finished product line, the production line, and the sound  testing rooms.  My favorite by far was the sound testing part- they took us into a room that they use to compare car speakers to ideal speakers.  The man who was showing us around let us listen to a few songs on the "perfect" speakers, including "Feeling Good" by Michael Buble.  Listening to this song in the sound room was absolutely an amazing experience- I have never heard a sound system like that before.  I could feel every note echoing in my body, and I heard a bunch of new rifts and instruments in the song that I had never noticed before.

After the sound room, our guide took us to a testing room, where we got to sit inside a Mercedes- Benz S class and listen to a brand new sound system, which was awesome.  I have never heard car speakers sound that good before.

My name tag from LEAR

From LEAR we drove an hour and a half into Nürnberg, where we took a city tour and then ate dinner.  Our tour guide was very nice and interesting, but it was hard for me to focus because I was so tired.  My favorite part was when he said that a building was "only 400 years old."  I often forget how old German towns are compared to cities in the United States.  It's crazy to think how Nürnberg's youngest building is older than our entire country.

My favorite building was an old church that was half Gothic style and half Baroque style.  They had originally built the church as a Roman church, but then they needed to expand so they built the second half of the church in the current style, the Gothic style. 

The Baroque half

The Gothic half

After our tour we went to a traditional Bavarian restaurant, where they gave us sausage and sauerkraut.  I don't like sauerkraut, but the sausages were amazing.  However, I wish we had more than sausage for dinner,

Bavarian sausage

After dinner, we took a quick tour of a castle right next to the restaurant, where we could see most of the city laid out.  

 Lucie, Katie, me and Sydney

The ride from Nürnberg back to Augsburg was two more hours, so we got home around 11 pm.  As soon as we got back, we all got ready and went out to the club.  Since my birthday is the 13th, everyone sang happy birthday to me exactly at midnight, when we were standing in line to get in.  I had a lot of fun, and I felt like tonight really helped to bond the German and American kids.  I spent a lot of time with Tabea and Tami on the way to the club, and Lucie and Sophia were with me for most of the night dancing.