Munich Week 2 + Olympiapark and Koenigsplatz

This week at work I worked a little bit with the acoustic testing with my mentor Jann, but I’ve transitioned into working more with my other mentor Fritz.  We’re doing Quasi-Static Photogramatry which is a method of design evaluation involving taking pictures with at high definition camera of points all around the car.  When you take pictures of these points from multiple angles, the computer program can recreate the geometry of the car.  Once you apply forces to the car, these points are displaced and you can analyze and measure the shifts in the car’s structure.  So far we’ve been doing this with torsions, where on one side of the car, the wheels are raised and the other side is lowered.  This simulates a situation where a car is parked on a curb with one side up on the higher side and the other in the street.  This happens quite a lot in Germany.  In fact I’ve seen many cases where the street parking was designed that way where the parking space is only about half the width of the car, so that the other half is up on the sidewalk.  I’m enjoying this a lot.  It’s pretty fun taking pictures all day.  Soon I’m going to learn how to analyze the results, but right now I’m basically collecting data for the computer program.  Next week is going to be really exciting because Monday I get to go to a test track where we are going to pull the car at about 40km/hr over a steel block (basically like a speed bump) and through a deep gap (basically like a ditch).  We’re going to take pictures of the before and after to analyze the effects.

On Wednesday, me and the other co-ops got to go to a driving simulation.  It was a half car perched on hydraulic pistons that controlled the movement.  It looked just like something you would see at an amusement park.  There was a huge screen a road displayed and we got to each go in and drive it.  It was amazing because the inside of the car was a real interior and all the buttons worked including the air conditioning and when I got to drive, it felt completely real.  The guy controlling the simulation could add bumps in the road and going over those bumps felt real.  The coolest thing is that they have modeled several BMW cars plus several competitors’ cars like Mercedes, Porsche, Audis, and even some American made.  They were able to switch the models seamlessly while I was driving, simulating each driving experience and asking my opinions on which ones had better drivability than others.  It was really amazing.

On Thursday, we got a Rolls Royce Ghost in the lab to run some acoustic testing on.  The car is worth $300,000!  As soon as it rolled in everybody flocked to it and the entire department spent easily an hour and a half oogling over it, playing with all the widgets, and having lots of laughs.  It was a really fancy car and was good fun to test out.  Here's what it looks like:

On Friday, I got to ride to Regensburg with my boss’s boss Helmut Schneeweiss to check out the production plant they have there.  He unfortunately was there doing some managerial stuff and spent the whole time discussing stuff with his colleagues, but we walked through a lot of the plant and I got to see all the robot arms doing spot welds and carrying car parts.  It’s really freaky looking down a long aisle of these robot arms all swinging around.  It looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. 

No, not that kind of robot arm!

This weekend I went to Olympia park where the 1972 Summer Olympics were held and did a tour of the inside of Olympia Stadium.  The tour was great but it was a little disappointing because the field was all dirt and they were working on it with construction equipment getting it set up for some kind of auto event.  Normally they let the tour groups play soccer on the field at the end, but instead we got to play on the practice field which was still cool.  After that I walked around the park and found some stone tiles that have famous people’s hand prints in them.  One in particular that stood out for me was an Aerosmith one because Janie likes them a lot.  After that I went up the Olympia tower, which is the largest lookout of Munich.  It was really high up and on a clear day, you’re supposed to be able to see the Alps.  I saw some shadows in the distance that I think were the Alps, but I couldn’t see them real well.  It was a great view to see the enormousness of Munich, but it was too high to really appreciate much of the details.  But I did get an excellent view of the BMW 4 cylinder headquarters and the BMW Museum.

For sure the largest Fussball table I've ever seen

Janie, this one's for you!

Sunday I went to Königsplatz, and on the way passed a high-end car repair place and was looking across the street at the sweet cars they had in their parking lot when I ran directly into a pole!  There was a really old guy who passed by me when this happened and I warned him to watch out for that pole and he laughed really hard.  Sadly that’s the second bout I’ve had with a pole since I’ve been here.  When we first got to Bonn the second week in Germany, I was walking next to Justin looking to the side when this bar came up out of the ground and bent around and back into the ground again.  Well it was perfectly crotch height and I walked directly into it.  It hurt … a lot.

Anyway, Königsplatz is an impressive square containing three buildings in Greek or Roman type architecture.  It contains the Glyptothek which is a museum that holds a collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, the Propyläen which is an enormous gate, and the Staatliche Antikensammlungen which contains a collection of the state of Bavaria’s antiques from Greek and Roman art.  All three are beautiful buildings.  The most interesting thing is that the Königsplatz was used during the Third Reich during Hitler’s rise to power for the Nazi party’s mass rallies.

There's more than one reason this is an amusing picture

After that I went grocery shopping and cooked my first ever German meal: Bratwurst and sauerkraut.  It was delicious!

Munich Week 1 + Residenz and Schloss Nymphenburg

BMW "4 Cylinders" headquarters, and BMW Museum

BMW Welt (BMW World)

I started my first day of work on Monday.  As soon as I looked out the window, my jaw dropped.  It was pouring rain and I realized that I had forgotten to bring an umbrella with me to Germany.  I met Corey in the lobby and we headed to our first day of work soaked.  I had a rain jacket on, but my pants were soaked all the way through top to bottom.  Once we got there, we went to the receptionist and checked in.  Soon our boss Luc Cremers met us in the lobby, greeted us and showed us around a little.

He took us into the central area of the building and me and Corey were blown away.  It’s a huge circular room that goes several floors up with glass windows all the way up.  Here there’s a café area where daily you find hundreds of employees enjoying a cup of coffee for breakfast with coworkers.  There’s also a BMW merchandise store, a dealership where you can buy a car, and in an adjacent building a small grocery store.

Herr Cremers introduced us to everyone in the Struktur Dynamik und Vibration department.  Everyone seemed extremely nice and friendly.  We then went immediately to get our BMW badges, where the lady seeing my personal information wished me an early birthday.  She was kind of like a drill sergeant getting all the new employees through the line, but she gave me a smile and a birthday wish which was very pleasant. 

After that, Herr Cremers told us we needed to get our work contract.  We had to go to a different building to do that, so we did but when we got there, they told us we needed to have a residence permit first.  Only problem with that was that the Finanzamt in München closed at noon, so we had to wait until Tuesday.  Instead we decided we would go to sign our Apartment Contract and get that out of the way.  Then we went back to work and Herr Cremers introduced us to the people in the lab we would be working in.  Once again everyone was extremely nice and very welcoming.  With all the joking we could tell it was going to be fun to work here.

Tuesday was my birthday which turned out to be legal documentation day!  It was a looooong day from 7:30AM to 4:30PM straight of going from place to place signing paper work.  I was completely exhausted by the end of it, but the awesome thing about doing all this on my birthday was that I got around 4 or 5 happy birthday wishes from people processing my documents, since they had to fill out my birth date.  Overall we got our City of Munich Registration, our Residence Permit, our Tax Card, and our Work Contract all completed.  The only thing left at the end of the day was to set up our bank accounts.  After all that was completed, Corey very nicely treated me to pizza and a beer at a local pizza restaurant.  It was delicious and I was very grateful to him for taking me out. 

Wednesday we worked with a  guy named Fritz (a nickname for Friedrich) doing Photogramatry on a prototype vehicle.  The way this works is by placing dots and markers all around the car and taking pictures everywhere around the car with a high definition camera.  These pictures are uploaded into a program that can piece all of these dots together and recreate the skeleton of the vehicle.  Once you’re done, that becomes your static case from which you can measure displacement of the dots once forces are applied.  The displacements allow you to measure with high precision the effects of design changes on the prototype car.  It’s cutting edge stuff and is really cool to learn about and work with.  After work I did some shopping, buying myself a much needed coffee maker and also some groceries.

Wow 2 story KFC!

Thursday we didn’t really do much except socialize.  So far our day has mostly consisted of chatting and getting to know our coworkers better.  It’s also been great for practicing our German language skills.  Most of the time we converse in German, but occasionally speak English when we don’t know how to explain it in German.  Some differences in the work day I’ve noticed so far:

1.       Meals seem to be higher priority here than in the United States.  The multiple cafés are completely flooded with people in the morning drinking coffee together and small bites to eat.  For lunch, we usually take an hour and then have about 15 minutes of coffee time after that.  Also on Friday mornings we have a traditional Bavarian breakfast called Brotzeit, where people eat Weisswurst, Pretzels, and beer.  Yes, beer for breakfast.  Additionally, if you happened to forget your beer, you can conveniently buy yourself a beer at the BMW food store on the campus.

2.       The work week consists of only 35 hours, meaning an average of 7 hours per day.  That means 7 hours of being there, not necessarily being productive.  So far people in the lab are extremely social and I don’t really see people getting a whole lot of actual work done.  But I think that’s because it’s a bit of a down time.  I’ve heard it will pick up later, so we’ll see what happens.

3.       Everything is very loose and informal.  Everyone in the lab uses the informal word for you “du” instead of “Sie”.  The days and times we have to work are extremely flexible.  We can take days off to travel if we want to, we just have to let at least one person know in advance.  We have flex time too where we can work less or more and make it up on other days and also shift around the times during the day we arrive and leave.  It’s all very relaxed and based on the honors system.

Thursday after work almost everyone in the department went out to a huge Paulaner beer garden, where they were serving a special brew of Paulaner Salvator for the lent season.  We drank beer, ate pretzels, and had a great time chatting around a wooden table outside from around 6pm to almost midnight.

Friday we worked with our mentor Jan Thielsen.  He showed us how to run acoustic tests on a car by measuring the frequency responses of force excitations on various points around the car.  We learned how to set up the equipment on the car, about the logic of the cables and signals, and are slowly learning how to use the program that processes the signals.

München Residenz
Saturday I decided to visit the Residenz, which is the former royal palace of the Bavarian monarchs of the city of Munich. It’s the largest city palace in Germany and is today open to visitors for its architecture and room decorations, and displays from the former royal collections.  The complex of buildings contains ten courtyards and the museum displays 130 rooms.  It was about an hour and a half walk there, but it was totally worth it since the weather was so nice.  I also got to visit the Treasury where they store a collection of holy relics and also the private theater of the estate.

Schloss Nymphenburg

Sunday I decided to visit the Schloss Nymphenburg, which was the main summer residence of Bavarian kings and rulers.  I also got to see the horse-drawn carriage museum and porcelain museum there.  This again was about an hour and a half walk which turned into 2 hours since I got lost, but again totally worth it because the weather was even more wonderful than yesterday.  After touring the palace itself I wandered around the palace grounds a bit and found a place by a pond to sit and read for the rest of the afternoon.  

Munich First Weekend, Sunday

This morning Corey and I took the train to the BMW dorm to move both of our stuff in.  He is able to move in today, but I’m just keeping my stuff there until tomorrow when I can move in. 

After doing that I went to church with Corey at Michaelskirche.  It wasn’t exactly ideal for my first catholic church service because it was all in Italian and there was a huge box blocking my view of the alter because they are doing construction.  Nonetheless, I got to experience it a little bit and learn more about it from Corey before and afterward. 

After church we parted ways so that he could unpack, get to know his roommate a little, and take a much needed nap.  I then went on a scavenger hunt to find Asamskirche.  I had seen pictures of it on the internet and just had to check it out for myself.  It turned out to be hard to find, so I had to ask several locals for directions, but even they didn’t know where it was.  Once I got there, it was totally worth it.  It’s strangely placed, right on the street connected to the houses next to it.  Apparently there was a rich family called the Asams who built this church connected right next to their house for their own personal place of worship.  I went in and couldn’t believe my eyes.  It was so over the top fancy and ornate.  Everything is very intricate and overlaid with precious metals.  Well worth the trip and the trouble finding it.

After that, I rode the train to Englischer Garden, where I took a leisurely walk through the enormous park.  There I saw the Chinesischer Turm, which is the most well-known and popular beer garden in Munich.  There had to have been at least a thousand plus people there all drinking Hofbraeuhaus beer.  After all it was a gorgeous afternoon.  There were loads of people in the park today.

I moved on and came to the Monopteros which is a greek monument with white columns and a dome that overlooks big fields where people were playing volleyball, soccer, frisbee and sunbathing.  Then I walked toward the Japanisches Teehaus just to see what it was, and found out it’s only open two weekends a month between April and October.  I think it’s open two weekends from now, so I might go back then and get some of the delicious looking tea.  Then I kept moving and came to a canal at the southern tip of the Englischer Garden at a place called the permanent wave.  Still trying to figure that one out.  Maybe because the water keeps flowing out from a small waterfall at the end of it?  I don’t know.  But I found a spot in the grass along the bank and spent the rest of the afternoon reading there.

For dinner I stopped at Burger King (which tasted so good by the way, I didn’t realize how much I missed burgers) and then took the train to Theresienwiese, which is where they hold Oktoberfest every year.  I was curious what would be there in the off-season, and sure enough it was a gigantic gravel pit.  I wonder if it serves any other purpose?  Then I took the train back to the Hauptbahnhof and walked back to the hostel, where I updated my blog and skyped with Janie for a bit before going to bed.  Tomorrow I start my first day of work!  I’m a little nervous about it though because of introducing myself and meeting my boss in German.  I know he speaks good English, but I want to try as hard as possible not to resort to it so that I can get better with German.