Caitlin

My Praktikum in Germany
2002-06-21 07:37:30 (UTC)

Continuing piecing e-mails together... (2)

[from an e-mail, june 14, 2002]

Living here in Cologne, I haven't been too lonely, because
I've sort of been "adopted" by a German family here, a
family that my mother had met when they lived in the United
States. Even though I have my own little apartment, every
night, I am invited to come up and eat dinner with the
family. They have two daughters: Lisa who is 10 years old,
and Anne who is 15. Once a week, Lisa and I cook the
dinner, because the mother doesn't come home from her
aerobics class until later. Last night, Lisa and I cooked
spaghetti carbonara, garlic bread, salad, and chocolate
mousse. I was surprised at how well it turned out! I enjoy
cooking when there are people to cook for, but for myself at
home, it isn't very much fun.

Last week, I went to an Indian restaurant with some of the
Americans that I met here at work, and I really enjoyed it.
I can only remember the name of the bread we ate, Naan, but
I had some curry dish with chicken and rice, which was
delicious. Later that night, we went out to several
different clubs, and ended up having a great time out on the
town.

Here at Ford, I'm a "Praktikantin," which is the German word
for an Intern. I'm working in the software/electronics
department. The cars that we work on here in Europe are
quite different from the Ford cars sold back at home in the
States, undoubtedly because of the differences in the
markets. In the States, larger cars are much more popular,
but because there isn't much space in Europe, the Europeans
prefer to drive smaller cars which use less gasoline. So
I'm working on the Focus, Fiesta, Mondeo and Ka. Of those,
only the Focus is sold in the United States, and it looks
very different from the one sold here.

[from an e-mail, june 17, 2002]

Yes! I'm here in Germany! My first day of work was two
weeks ago, and since then, I've found my own beautiful
little apartment in a nice quiet neighborhood here in
Cologne. I take the U-Bahn (would that be a street car or
subway train?? i don't know) to work, and it takes me about
45 minutes, but it's much better than driving as I found out
today....

I'm having a fairly good time here at Ford, except that they
don't give me very much work to do, so I'm bored for most of
the time. Today, they gave me a company car to drive to
another site to do some tests, and it was my first real time
driving in Europe, and it was terrifying!!! None of the
streets are straight, the bike-riders and pedestrians are
idiots, and there aren't enough road signs! Arghhh... I got
lost on my way back, and the trip took me about an hour,
instead of the normal 10-15 minutes.

Because I'm a Praktikantin (an intern) hired directly
through Ford-Germany, I get as many vacation days as any
German worker, which is a ton! I get a total of 3.75 each
month, (2.5 is normal, and the extra is because of Ford's
policy of working an extra half an hour each day). So I'll
get to travel tons through Europe while I'm here, and in
addition, I have a full month between when my job finishes
(Dec 2/3/4/5) and when my flight goes home (Jan 2), so I
plan to come to Finland for the holidays... hopefully for a
few weeks before Christmas until around New Years.


[from an e-mail june 19, 2002]

My week here at work has been fairly busy, (which is good!),
and yesterday, I got to visit the Ford Proving Grounds in
eastern Belgium. It was my first time ever in Belgium, and
even though I only spent a couple of hours there, it was
really interesting to see the little villages that we drove
through to reach the testing site.


[from an e-mail june 19, 2002]

I've been having a great time this week at work! For the
first time, they've been giving me work to do, and it's so
nice to be busy! On Monday, I visited one of our supplier
companies, and conducted tests on the "yellow boards." They
are like big metal yellow tables, covered with wires and
modules (little machines) that control different parts of a
car. It is a simulation of all of the electronics in a car.
And we hooked up a laptop computer, to see the different
messages that would be sent when I did different things to
the set-up.

And yesterday, we drove to Belgium (takes less than 2
hours), because Ford has Proving Grounds there... a big
piece of land with race tracks, steep roads, pot-hole roads,
huge water puddles, etc.... to simulate all of the worst
possible conditions a car could have to drive through. But
I didn't see all of these test tracks, because we had to
look at a certain car and try to determine what was wrong
with the locking and unlocking. But it was my first time in
Belgium, and we drove through many little villages to get to
the site. I couldn't believe the architechture of the
little houses; somehow they looked modest and striking at
the same time!


[from an e-mail june 20, 2002]

I have my own apartment now in Cologne, within the same
building that the family I first stayed with lives. It's
such a beautiful little place, with the most incredible
bathroom.... a big tub, a shower, a toilet, and some other
thing which is either a urinal or a bidet.... I haven't
figured it out yet.

On Tuesday morning at work, I was going down to get my
breakfast, (a cup of coffee and a roll with cheese), and one
of my co-workers stopped me and asked if I would like to go
to Belgium for the day to do some tests at our vehicle
proving grounds. Of course I said yes, and asked when.
Today! I had about 15 minutes to get ready, and it took
about two hours to drive there. We went through the
Netherlands to get there, as it was the quickest route.
Crazy! I've never been to Belgium before, and we listened
to the radio as we were driving through the countryside, and
I first thought they were speaking German on the radio, and
I simply couldn't understand it anymore. But then I
realized that they were speaking Flemish. But how much fun
it was... And in that same afternoon, we just drove back to
Germany.




Ad: