Lucerne - Day 3

Today was our last day in Europe :(. In the morning we had two business meetings at our hotel. The first was Bucherer which I think was my favorite of our whole trip. The guy was a really good speaker and explained to us their branding and new marketing tactics. Bucherer is the largest jewelry and watch retailer in Europe and the largest dealer of Rolex in the world. Something interesting about that is that in the 20s when no one would pick up Rolex in their stores, Bucherer's did because they were no doing too well. Now obviously Rolex has grown to a world luxury brand and it is a major part and revenue maker of Bucherer. Then we had the Jonhson and Jonhson presentation. I liked that one too and he pretty much jsut gave a background of the company. He also explained J&J's trouble with the FDA recently and how they plan to rebound from that. After the two business meetings. we had a rap uo meeting and rated everything we had done the whole trip so it can be improved for next year.

From there, I ate my packed lunch and Laura, Brittney, Chelsea, Sydney and I went back to the Bucherer fro some more shopping and walked around the city. We went to the MM Market which had Swiss chocolate for super cheap comared to everywhere else :) I still spent a good amount of money though fro all of the people I was getting it for. From there, we went to the engraved lion on the side of this wall which was neat. It was from hundreds of years ago and it was alot bigger than I imagined. Of course when i reached to get my camera, it wouldnt turn on. I realized that I forgot to put the charged battery back in my camera haha so I didnt get any pictures of that. We ended up getting gelato after (I know what a surprise) and then just came back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

For dinner we went to this really nice Italian food restaurant right on the water. We got there early enough to beat the crowd which was nice. I got this pasta filled with meat in a cream sause and it was one of the my favorite meals the whole trip (expensive though). We ended up meeting a lady and her 6 year old daughter who are from New York, but who live here for her husband's job. I could tell she was really glad to see and talk to Americans, but said she really liked it here because they can see and travel so much. She said she does miss home though especially Target haha. After that, we just walked around and took pictures since we were dressed up for once.

We came back to the hotel and we all left for the river desert cruise. I had a really great time on that! The desert was just ok, but everyone dressed up and we took millions of pictures! We all just relaxed and talked about our fun times on our trip. I am really going to miss it here every though Im glad to be coming home. I have met so many great people and it will just be weird not having them around everyday. Well so after the cruise we just came back to the hotel to finish packing. Now I am in Laura and Sydney's room for a sleepover with Brittney too. We have to be ready by 3 am to load up the buses to leave for the airport so we are getting up at 2 am. Its already 11 pm so its more of a short nap actually haha so lets see if we sleep at all!

Lucerne - Day 2

Today we got up early and got on a bus to Mt. Titlis. It was about a 45 minute drive and the scenary was really pretty. Mount Titlis is a big tourist attraction outside of Lucerne for sledding/tubing and skiing in the winter. They had told us that it takes about an hour to get to the top of the mountain by the various ski lifts and they werent joking. We had to take 4 different lifts to get to the top of the mountain to sled. The way up the lifts was the adventuresome part. I have never seen so many Indian and Asian tourists in my life. Apparently, Mt. Titlis is a big attraction to them because white people were way in the minority. I soon learned that the Asian and Indian culture is alot different than ours. First off, they do not adhere to lines, line at all. I guess its normal to cut where they are from so they thought it would be the same here. The lines got no where because everyone would just cut in front us of. Secondly, they are very pushy and only look out for themselves. In a line, we would get pushed from behind or moved out of the way by them just because they wanted to get in front and could care less that i was in front of them. I was just a minor barrier that they pushed aside to get to their destination. It was the most frustrating part about getting up to the top of the mountain because it was just such a culture shock and the common courtesy in the United States was not there.

So now off of that soap box, when we got up to the top the view was beautiful! I was so glad that we went even just for pictures. The sledding was also fun too. There were tubes, sleds, and various things to be able to go fast. There was also a conveyor belt that you could get on that would take you back to the top so you didnt have to walk which was nice. Oh and about that, so the tubes were the favorite among everyone and there were not enough to go around. So people would wait in line by the conveyor belt and once the people who had already went reached the top, the tubes were given to the people waiting. Well that didnt go over very well for the Indians because they would not give their tubes up because they wanted to give them to their family members. I saw a fight between two Indian men because one was waiting and the other would not give his tube up even though he had already gone. A worker had to stand there and forcefully take the tubes away from them (they still tried to not give them up) so that the rest of the people could have tubes. Besides all of that drama it was really fun.

Around lunch time, Amanda, Sydney, Brittney, Laura, Drew and I went back down one lift and ate lunch. It was crowded there too of course. I just got french fries, a bottle of water, and a drink and it was 18 francs! After lunch we decided to head back down since it would take a long time so we could go shopping. Just imagine what I described on the way up, as the same as the way down. We finally got out and had to take a train back to Lucerne which was about an hour. Once we (Laura, Amanda, Sydney, Brittney, and I) got back we changed and then headed to the department store Bucherer. And guess who was all there too? It was so crowded and a house of chaos. There was pushing and cutting again with no sense of order. We just looked around got what we needed and left. We talked to a lady working at the store and she said that she is losing her mind more and more everyday working there with all of the tourists haha. We just walked around after that and went into random stores shopping. We were all getting hungry and annoyed with the crowds so we went and ate at this place called New York Cafe. It was pretty cheap relatively speaking and I got a slice of pizza for 5 francs. We took our food up to Brittney and I's hotel room and just talked and ate. After that, I started to pack everything up for the airport. Now we are all just chilling and relaxing on one of our last nights here!

Lucerne - Day 1

Ok I forgot to put this is yesterday's journal and I will add it in later, but I just wanted to write about yesterday at the checkout line at H&M. So like I said it was super crowded so when I got up to the checkout line I asked the lady working, "Hi how are you?" with a smile. She looked at me really funny and just said "fine." So I thought she was just unfrienldy and knew not to say anything else. Well in the middle of her swiping my card she stopped and looked at me and said, "I have been working here for 3 years and you are the first customer who has asked how I am doing and I really appreciate it. Thanks." I was shocked that she had never received a "how are you" while working. I mean it felt good to know that I made her day better, but it just really shows how Europeans are definitely more cold and not as friendly as Americans. I know that was random, but I just wanted to include that to show the major cultural differences between America and here.

So today was our travel day to Lucerne. On our way to Lucerne, we stopped at King Ludwig's castle a.k.a the castle which the Disney castle is based off of. It is the most visited catle in Germany and it was sooo crowded! Dr. Mac didnt left out though how far of a walk it was from the drop off point to the castle itself. We got there around 10:30 am and were allowed to walk around and eat before our tour at 12:20 pm. We decided to start walking up there first since it was early, and man it was a trek! It was worth going up, but Im pretty sure I will be sore tomorrow because it was steep uphill walking for like 20 minutes. When we got up there we ate and looked at really pretty viewpoints of the castle and the landscape. I really liked our tour also and all of the rooms walls looked very fairy taleish in nature. The view from the castle was amazing! I would love to wake up to mountains with greenery and a lake every morning. After our tour, we walked back down the hill and hung out for a little while and loaded back up on the bus. Oh and by the way Europeans dont know how to build bathrooms either. Out of the whole park there were only one set of public restrooms that I saw and there were two stalls for girls and two for boys. Like really? The line was so long so I along with others went into the mens restroom since they were enclosed because we would have been there all day if we didnt. That was a side note too, I just get distracted easily.

From there, we got to Lucerne around 7:30 pm. The drive from Germany to Switzerland was beautiful and I saw all land forms from hills to mountians to lakes to rivers. I intentionally stayed awake to be able to see the pretty scenery. We had our last orientation meeting and group presentations from Johnson and Johnson, Lucerne, and Bucherer. Our meeting lasted a long time because we had to plan out transportation for going to Mount Titlis tomorrow. So we didnt get out until like 9:30 pm. By that time I was past starving, so some girls and I went to Burger King for dinner and my meal was 12.90 francs! Yes I know ridiculous, but everything here is really expensive. I thought since the dollar was worth more than the franc I would be getting more for my money, but I soon realized at Burger King that I was wrong. We are all exhausted so we just came back to the hotel and am writing our journals before bed. I cant wait for sledding tomorrow!

Munich - Day 3

Today we went to BMW for a tour in the morning. It is the world headquarters in Munich and where it was first started in the 1920s for cars. I found the tour interesting and European car makers do things so differently than in the United States. Customer service has a complete different meaning there. For example, they have this delivery room where customers can come and pick up their cars. It like this really nice room where they have a personal guide who shows them there car and gives them indepth show of the car. Our tour guide said it is the ultimate "emotional experience" and let them drive it off right off of the floor. The customers also receives a free tour of the facility and the museum, vochers from the restaurant and shop, a personal photographer for the crowning of the keys, and much more. It was quite the thing to see and BMW really prides themselves in customer service. They said that 20% of their in store deliveries are from the United States meaning that people come here to pick up their cars and have them shipped by boat to the United States. I think that is just crazy and those people have too much money then they know what to do with.

After the tour, CJ, Amanda, and I went to go look at the olympic stadium next to the facility. From there, we went back to the hotel and changed for shopping. We went to some local shops around the area and got some soveniours. Our bike tour was supposed to be at 3 pm, but when we got there they said it got changed to 4 pm so Amanda and I went to H&M. I have never seen a store so crowded, but somehow we managed to try things on and pay within an hour. We got to the bike tour with our whole group and got separated up into 3 groups. We had a guy named Will who was from Dallas. At first, all of the girls thought he was really cute and nice, but sooned realized that he was a jerk. He made alot of crude jokes throughout the first part of the tour and cussed too much which made it not as enjoyable. We stopped for dinner with all of the groups and someone from our group complained about him. He got told about the complaint and instead of handling the situation well, he gave the weakest and most lame apology every. Will pretty much pouted the whole rest of the time and said comments reffering to our group as being naive or "well yall probably wouldnt want to go to that museum because its too offensive. " It just made the whole tour really awkward and he had no reason to act like a 5 year old and was definitely not being professional. I did still like the tour though because I got to fully see Munich, but our tour guide made it less enjoyable which Dr. Mac was told about.

From there tour, CJ, Amanda, and I stopped at another store and then just came back to the hotel. We are all super tired and have to get up realy to travel to Lucerne tomorrow. Thats all for today!

Munich - Day 2

This morning we went to the Dachau concentration camp located outside of Munich. It was raining the whole time which made it harder to get around since it was mostly outside. I found the concentration camp very moving and by the end of it I had a knot in my stomach. We went on a self guided audio tour to different parts of the camp from the crematorium to the barracks. There was also a museum that showed a lot of pictures with information and a movie that we saw at the end. Everyone knows the history of Hitler and World War II, but making it personal and seeing it face to face puts a whole new perspective on the situation. I could not even imagine going through the things which the prisoners (not just Jews) went through. In one of the audio parts, it said that the clothing consisted of wooden shoes, pants, a shirt, and a hat. They had no underwear and the hat was not for warmth, but only for the purpose of saluting the soldiers to give them respect. At that camp alone, over 30,000 people were recorded to have died (which means there were a lot more). The camp did not have women there until around 1945 and when they came they were forced into prostitution and had to do the same jobs as men. When they got pregnant, many tried to hide their pregnancies or killed the baby when it was born to not have it suffer the testing and death which would occur with the SS army. Also, it just shocks me that that really was not that long ago like Geen was alive during that time. I just don’t know how I would have reacted to that situation if I was alive in the United States when all of those people were suffering. I could talk all day about all of the things that I learned and saw, but I am not going to.




After the concentration camp tour, we were dropped back off at our hotel. Amanda, CJ, Kinsie, Caitlin, and I were going to go souvenir shopping, but it’s a national holiday today and everything was closed. It was also raining still so it made us not want to walk around. So I ended up taking a nap and just hanging out downstairs until we left for dinner. We went back to that Hofbrauhaus where everyone got drinks. Amanda, CJ, and I didn’t want t spend a lot on food so we ended up going to Burger King. It was actually really similar, but they could not understand how I could want a chicken sandwich plain haha. So after that we went back and said bye to everyone and just came back to the hotel. We are hanging out downstairs writing journals and uploading pictures. Hopefully I will go to bed early tonight!

Munich - Day 1

So today was our travel day to Munich. We loaded up and left around 8 am and stopped at the Audi Manufacturing Plant around lunch time. We had time to eat and go to the museum before our business meeting. I brought my lunch to save money and alot of us just ended up sitting in the lounge area and talking until our tour. I did though find a big duffle bag at the gift shop for pretty cheap so I was excited about that. I thought we were going to have a business meeting with Audi, but it was actually it was just a tour of the whole plant. I really liked the tour because everything was so high tech and we got to see every process of production. Also, since I took that manufacturing class I saw everything that I learned last year in real life and I realized that the class had real meaning haha. The AUdi plant that we were at is the main headquarters of Audi and employees like 30,000 people. It was the coolest and most advanced place I had ever seen. They even have bikes for workers to get to one place to the other because its so big. The tour lasted for about 2 hours and then we got back on the bus to go to Munich.

The bus ride was really short and we had group presenetations for Munich, King Ludwig's Castle, BMW, and a Dachau concentration camp. We also had a short orientation meeting about the city and about changes with our flight schedules. Apparently the second flight from London to Houston was cancelled, but they got it to where everyone on that flight is now on our earlier flight. After the orientation meeting, Jay, Kensie, Amanda, CJ, Caitlin, and I got on the subway and headed into towards the main square. We didnt really know what what we wanted to eat so we just walked around and found this really good place called Opatija. I have Chicken Cordon Blue which was only 10.50 euros and it was so much food and delicious. Everyones food was really good and our service was really good. We all tipped the waitor pretty well and he seemed really surprised, but appreciative. Apparently tip here is normally only 5% so he got a good surprise.

From there, we went to this place called Hofbrauhaus which is like this enormous pub/tourist attraction. It was really cool to see because I had never seen something that big. There was no palce to sit so we had to go to the second floor and there was a cool German band playing. Amanda and I actaully interviewed a man who played the clarinet in the band and he was really nice. He has been playing for 30 years and travels all over the world just for his hobby, but he works for Texas Instruments as his primary profession. He was really interested in our studies and activities in America and I just enjoy talking to locals. Hofbrauhaus has this famous beer which I tried and it was half lemonade and half beer. It was surprisingly not too bad, but still super strong since I dont drink.

After, we left and just came back to the hotel. I am writing my journal now down in the lobby and just got yelled at. A guy came up to me because my feet were on a coffee table and said "People eat on this. " He then asked if I did that at home and when I said yes he said "Well you dont do that here." So I learned my lesson haha and good night!

Innsbruck - Day 4

Today we had two business meetings. Our first one was to Riedel Glass which I liked alot. When we first got there, we had an introduction and briefing on the history of the company and glass making from a marketing specialist. The company's main production is wine glasses and have perfected different glasses for different types of wine. Then we got ot see the actually manufacturing of the glass which I thought was really interesting. Since I took a manufacturing class last semester I knew everything the workers were doing and all of the terminology which our tour guide was saying. It made me feel cool because it sounded like a foreign language to 99% of the other people on the tour. They used blow molding with the hot molten glass for the cup part and then add the stem later. After that, we went through this weird audio walk through tour of the senses and went to the giftshop.

From Riedel, we went to a place to eat and we met two Aggies. They are married and graduated in 2005. They are travelling with highschoolers with some sort of ministry, but it wa such as small world to see Aggies at a rest stop. After that, we went to Swarovsky for another presentation. I really liked that presentation because it talked about brand image and marketing strategies for Swarovsky. We then got to tour the facility and went to another exhibit. They had a store there too, but I held out and didnt get anything.

Once we got back from the hotel, I ate my lunch which I packed (which I forgot) for dinner. Then, Laura, Sydney, Brittney, Chelsea, Rachel, and I went to a restaurant called the Golden Adler. I just got a desert while they ate, but it was really good and it was a really nice restaurant. We stayed for a long time and just talked about random stuff from our family to going to the bathroom haha. It was really fun though and on our way back to the hotel we stopped and got gelato. Yes I know my second desert! Its just so cheap here and I dont normally eat like this so I am making an exception. Now we are all in Laura and Sydney's room doing our journals and packing our stuff up because we are moving to Germany tomorrow!

Innsbruck - Day 3

So today we had another free day in Innsbruck. In the morning though we had an orientation meeting and group presentations from Swarovski, Riedel Glass, and Audi. I really liked the presentations and found them very informative and interesting. After the orientation meeting, Taylor, Jay, Amanda, Kinsie, CJ, and I decided to walk around the town and look at the shops. Alot of shops are on Maria Theresien street which is named after a woman who lived here. There is an arch called Arch de Trioumph which she built and is located in the middle of the street at an interesection. Its right by our hotel so its always a good marker to tell when we are close. We first went to Swarovski which was probably not a good idea because there was alot of cute stuff there. It was not as expensive as I expected it to be, so needless to say, us girls did some damage. From there, we just walked around and did window shopping. We also saw the Golden Roof which was built in something like 1493. Its really small on the side of a building, but still really neat since it was made so long ago.

After we ate lunch, John and Ryan joined us and we went up to Bergisel, the top of the ski jump from a previous olympic games. It was quite a walk, but well worth it. The view from the top was amazing! It seriously looked like a postcard and there really are no words that would give it justice. We tooks tons of pictures and just soaked up the beautiful landscape for awhile. We also saw where the skiiers initially took off and man it was steep. I dont think people really how steep it is on tv, but I could never do that. From there, we walked back to the shopping area and Amanda and I broke off to do some more shopping. I got some postcards and looked for a large duffle (because I dont think mine is big enough) for the plane ride back. I was unsuccessful so we just cam back to the hotel and relaxed until our dinner.

For dinner the whole group was bused to a restaurant for an authentic Austrian dinner. I really didnt know what to expect, but it exceed all expectations. We first were offered either salad or garlic cream soup which is what I got and it was so good. I didnt think I would like it, but I inhaled it. After that, the waitresses brought ribs, schnizel, pork, bread, and french fries :) It is the best meal I have had so far and I ate way to much! Then there was also an Austrian band that yoodled and played polka type music for us. We learned different dances and we even got the chaperones to get up and do partner dancing. The night was just so fun and I had a blast! Its nice now because everyone knows everyone and people are just more comfortable so it allows us to relax and have a better time. After the band played, we got an apple struttle desert which I didnt eat, but heard it was good. Then we were led on a latern hike on a trail around the restaurant which was really fun. We all just goofed around and sang silly songs which I loved. The night was definitely a success and one of the best thus far. I cant wait to see what the rest of our trip brings!