Forschung (Research)

              After a quick breakfast of cereal, Butterbrot (Bread with butter meat and cheese), and fruit I was off to the second day of class. We are so far north that the sun rises about 5:30 and sets at about 10:00 so it seems to always be light outside. The second day of class progressed at little bit slower than the first day, but I think that was likely anticipating the after class excursion. Today we visited Mercedes-Benz Düsseldorf. In Düsseldorf they manufacture and assemble the Mercedes Sprinter and VW … (A large van). The plant is situated in the middle of the city and is about the size of a small city itself. Our tour guide was from Poland and only spoke Russian, Polish and German –no English. It was kind of funny to hear German spoken with a Russian accent. We began the tour and I was immediately enthralled in everything that was going on around me. This place was a mechanical engineers fantasyland. It was literally like being in a “how it’s made” episode…doesn’t get any better!

                Anyways, we started with the very first piece of the van, and followed it through the assembly process, and watched as the vans took shape. Every little process was optimized for efficiency and quality, and the tour guide was very proud to point out how Mercedes took such care in their work. During the tour I was also very happy to find myself understand everything that our tour guide was telling us. It was kind of reassuring to know that my German has reached a level where I can understand even complex descriptions an technical terms. Unfortunately I cannot get into to many details about the plant, because a lot of it is likely proprietary, but regardless it was probably one of the coolest and most fascinating tours that I have ever taken. After the tour we had the afternoon free, and it was time to determine once and for all how Alt should taste.

                In order to come to a more conclusive and accurate conclusion our group of researchers opted to try a place that had been recommended to us by several of the locals – Brauerei im Füchschen. When we arrived there was a mass of people, and at first we thought oh great, there is going to be like a 45 min wait. But to our delight we found that everybody was just standing outside drinking and enjoying the nice weather. We went right in, grabbed and table and got to work. So far Füchschen Alt is my favorite. The beer is a perfect balance of hoppyness and maltyness, and it finishes on a malty note – which I like. After concluding our experiments we decided to verify our conclusions by trying another highly recommended brewery – Hausbrauerei zum Schlüssel. This Alt was also very good, and similar to Zum Füchschen, expect that it ended on a slighty hoppy note.