Audi

Yesterday we went to the Audi factory and museum which was both interesting and surreal. The "Audi Forum" here has 4 restaurants, including an after work "Jazz Lounge" where people can wait to pick up their specially modified luxury cars straight from the factory. The factory itself is run almost entirely be giant, graceful robots and german men with beer-bellies in gray jumpsuits. It was incredibly loud and large and made me both impressed but also sad at the amount of power and energy being spent on...making fancy cars. It reminded me a lot of the documentary "Manufactured Landscape."

This year Audi is celebrating its 100th anniversary so they had a large display in the museum of the oldest existing Audi cars. The cars themselves were beautiful, like works of art. I wasn't expecting to be impressed or even interested considering that I don't drive, but I was pleasantly surprised. Hopefully I'll be able to post pictures here soon, since I just found a nice little cafe with great espresso and free wireless. Our tourguide in the Audi Museum interspersed his tour with really interesting political, historical, and economic facts which was nice--considering that the auto industry played a large part both in manufacturing during both World Wars and also during the reconstruction after WWII. It's interesting to note that Audi survived while many other german auto brands didn't because Ingolstadt is located in what was American-controlled territory and there was therefore greater leeway and also greater ability to export to other Western nations.

Anyways, all for now as I'm off to German Class. 

Bis Spater!