REGENSBURG- Getting Settled and My First Day At OSRAM

Today my roommate, Stefan, and I woke up and headed out into Regensburg for my first daylight experience here. It's home to about 200,000 and located on the Danube River northeast of Munich in Bavaria. The city dates back to the Celts, but also has routes in the Roman Legion camp Castra Regina, and is still the home of the Thurn and Taxis family. Supposedly this family (well the one gold digger, I mean, wife who married in and inherited it all) is one of the wealthiest in the world. Their property occupies about 40 acres in the middle of Regensburg, and the castle is said to be bigger that Buckingham Palace. There is a church there that is almost entirely gilded with gold and has skeletons of some famous Catholic church figures. I think it is the most impressive church I have ever seen. Anyways, the town is very historic, extremely romantic, has a historic/world famous Bratwurst restaurant that cranks out sausage all day, and seems to be full of life during the summer.

After our walk, Stefan helped me outfit my room with a bed, desk, chair, and storage unit. By the afternoon it was looking much less lonely--red sheets on my trendy new twin bed and my Mac on the IKEA desk opposite of my IKEA dresser--a perfect setup for a summer's stay. The bed and mattress were given to me by Stefan's friend, Stefan, who I met the first night at Bismark Platz.

The next morning I woke up at around 8:00am for work, a little later than I had wanted to but no so bad for my alarm-less rising (I usually set about 5-6 alarms to get up for my 9am classes). I arrived around 9:30am, checked in with the security office, and was introduced to the Human Resource people who setup my internship with MIT Germany. The building is really phenomenal and brand new. Then I was led to the fifth floor (and did I mention that in Germany the 1st floor starts on the American second floor) for my first summit of the OSRAM box. It would be the first of many times that I would walk these six flights. I met supervisor, Julius Muschaweck, and my team, the Applications Engineers, and instantly felt a sense of excitement. All of the workers in my department are really friendly (wirklich freundlich) and interesting people to talk to. One of my older colleagues and I have a 45-minute discussion each day at my desk over interesting politics, ideas, and difference between America and Germany. I would have never thought that I would be so intrigued talking to someone about some of this stuff, but this guy was a professor at five or so American universities in different parts of the country and brings a great perspective on the two countries.

My work at OSRAM will begin with me writing some C++ code for part of the applications website in order to help their customers better choose LEDs for their products. It should be a good challenge, but I am already finding myself growing a lot in the workplace and in the programming department. We'll see how the summer turns out after working with a bunch of fun Germans. I can't imagine it being too bad.