Wednesday thankfully began slightly later than Tuesday,
although only by about an hour. The group again met up in the lobby to make our
way towards the train station and take the hour-long train ride to Gersthofen.
We were traveling to Gersthofen to visit Seele, a well-known manufacturer of
curtain wall systems. Seele is remarkably similar and produces comparable
products to the company we visited Tuesday, Gartner. Our tour of the company
was similar as well, as we began our morning learning more about the company
and followed the presentation with a tour around the factory. One aspect of
Seele that differentiates the company from its competitors is its ability to
self-manufacture glass for their facades. While most people wouldn’t know
Seele’s glass from the next manufacturer’s, many have actually seen the glass
before. Seele produces glass for all the flagship Apple stores, such as the
completely glass store in New York City. It was extremely interesting to learn
how Seele designed and manufactured the different types of glass for Apple, in
addition to learning about how demanding Apple is as a client. While companies
like Seele and Gartner are somewhat foreign to Building Science students, both
companies provided an interesting look into the different elements needed for a
successful curtain wall system. |
| BMW Headquarters |
Following our train ride back into Munich, the group was let
loose for the day. With a few hours left in the afternoon, a few other students
and I decided to venture across town to the BMW Museum. With their headquarters
in Munich, BMW is a German staple. While I would rather drive a nice truck than
a BMW any day of the week, I was interested to learn more about BMW. After
spending some time in the museum I was very surprised to learn that BMW began
as an airplane engine company, followed by motorcycles, and then finally cars.
For a company so revered for their cars, it was definitely not expecting their
start to be in airplane engines. A factory tour was included with our admission
to the museum, but there was a waiting list of three weeks to visit the
factory! Amazed and upset by the wait, we decided to head back to the hotel for
the evening after a pretty long day.
One nice thing about our hotel was that there was a small
kitchen included in our room. Complete with a mini-fridge, stove, and
microwave, the kitchen provided a way eat a few cheap meals in Munich. I
normally bought a microwavable box of Barilla marinara pasta and a few pieces
of fresh bread when I ate in the room, but fixing this food was easier said
than done at first. Cooking the pasta required decently detailed instructions
which were all in German. Not speaking German, I was afraid that if I simply
winged it I would ruin the pasta. After some Googling, I was luckily able to
find a website with the exact instructions for my pasta except in English. Even
though microwaving a meal seems easy, the language barrier can throw a kink in
any plans.
We relaxed the rest of Wednesday night in preparation to our
train to Paris on Thursday. We will actually be taking a train from Munich to
Stuttgart, followed by a high-speed train from Stuttgart to Paris. I’m pretty
excited about the high-speed train, which apparently travels at close to 200
miles per hour.
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