Tuesday, October 8, 2019 | Written by Karsten
The Georgia Tech-Lorraine program includes both graduate students and undergraduate students. However, naturally, students tend to hang out in their respective program. This is because of the age difference, schedule differences, and some language and cultural differences—many of the graduate students haven’t been to the Atlanta campus, while the undergraduates, excluding transient students, have. Some of the graduate students learned English as their second or even third language. Being fluent in more than one language is something I’m quite jealous of.
Since students stick to their programs, even though some of us live in the 
same building, most of us haven’t met. However, for the first time, the French professor at Georgia Tech Lorraine, who has classes with both graduate and undergraduate students, planned an event for the two programs to come together and mix so that graduate students and undergraduate students could meet. She thought this event could be beneficial to both groups, as some graduate students are coming to the Atlanta campus in the spring and needed information on housing and things to do in the city, and undergraduate students could hear about graduate programs. Professor Serafin introduced the idea to her French class, which I’m a part of, and there was a general interest from our group. She sweetened the idea with free pizza so we could get some of our friends to come, and we promised we could get some more undergraduate students to come, and so Professor Serafin went ahead and planned the event.
The event happened on Tuesday immediately after the CROUS cooking event. On this rainy Tuesday, more than twenty students from each program came out to meet each other. It was set up in a “speed dating” manner, meaning there were a bunch of tables lined up, with undergraduate students on one side and graduate students on the other, and one side 
rotated after about two minutes. While this ended up seeming like a really short time, both sides were able to introduce themselves and share some valuable information with the other. After about thirty minutes, there was about five minutes of free for all, so you could meet new students or pick up on a conversation that was cut short by the two minute timer. After all of this, we could continue to mingle and eat the pizza that just arrived.
Being an introvert, naturally, I wouldn’t expect to have liked an event like this. However, being that I promised Professor Serafin that I’d come and the event having free food, I came and actually had a good time. It was very interesting to hear the graduate students perception of Atlanta and it was good to be able to help them with whatever they might’ve needed that we had previous experience with.
headed to London to meet up with DJ. We booked our train tickets and our Airbnb nearly two weeks prior, and we were all so excited to be able to understand everything that was said to us. However, upon arrival and messaging our hosts that we were on our way, we received a response that took us by surprise: 
room, planned out what we wanted to see for Saturday, and went to sleep.
had to cross had a one million-person protest against Brexit. I guess that’s what we get for going to London the weekend before Great Britain was supposed to leave the EU. 
went to Harrods to check out what was outside, as I knew the place is famous for what supercars are parked out front. On the way, we were able to walk through Hyde Park and, in typical London fashion, we got rained on. DJ met back up with us on the way to Harrods. After seeing what was parked outside, we decided to walk in for a little only to see that everything was out of our price range. Another group of GTL students was in London for the weekend, so we met up with them at Nando’s for dinner and then headed back to the hostel for the night.
On Sunday, we went to the British Museum. The highlights from the museum included seeing the Rosetta Stone and an Easter Island head—you know, similar to the talking one in Night at the Museum. After a couple of hours there, we headed for lunch, and I had Bangers and Mash. The only food that I felt was missing from this weekend was a traditional English breakfast, but oh well. From lunch, we went back to the main station to catch our train back to Metz. Besides being able to understand all of the words around us, one big highlight from the weekend was definitely being able to try a lot of traditional – stereotypical even – English foods and trying tea for the first time. Despite the price, London is easily one of my favorite cities that I’ve been to during this semester, and I hope to come back one day.
Munich HTS trip, I thought I was going to take a train to go to Rajka, Hungary, walk about two and a half miles to stand on where Slovakia, Austria, and Hungary came together, and then head back to Vienna and spend the day there and then take an overnight train back to Metz. Well, a couple of those stayed true—I’m writing this on the overnight train back to Metz. However, after making a couple of questionable moves, I ended up not going to Rajka.
Munich for the weekend, and then headed to the station for my first solo trip. My trains took me through Salzburg, Vienna, and eventually to Parndorf, Austria, where I spent the wee hours (from 1:30 A.M. until 5:30 A.M.) of the morning. I was the only person at this tiny train station in the middle of nowhere. Needless to say, I hated that and was creeped out the entire time I was awake. I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep (putting me at 11 hours of sleep in three nights), but it was here that I decided to skip out on Hungary and just head to Bratislava, Slovakia, and then to Vienna. This decision let me get out of Parndorf a few minutes earlier and into Vienna four hours earlier. After spending twenty minutes in the Bratislava train station, I have now been to fourteen countries in my life.
cathedral, but I regret not going in. I ended up just eating some ice cream and drinking a coffee outside, as I was exhausted. From here, I made the hour trek to the train station, grabbed dinner, and hopped on this train. I ended up walking over twenty miles throughout Vienna, so I’d say there isn’t too much I didn’t see, except for Eliud Kipchoge breaking the marathon record in Vienna on the same day, but I felt as if I had also completed a marathon. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get some sleep on the rest of this train, as I need to catch up.
us went to get coffee or hot chocolate and then to explore the English Gardens, as this was right by where we were supposed to meet for dinner. It was beautiful outside and felt so good—maybe I can bring these European temperatures back to Atlanta! After wandering around for an hour, we made it to the restaurant where we were meeting Georgia Tech alumni for dinner. The HTS professor arranged this dinner so that we could network and hear about working or interning in Europe. We all were able to learn lots from the experience. We returned to our hostel at about 1:00 AM and immediately went to bed.
two nights combined. We had breakfast and then left for BMW World. Here, they had on display almost all of their new cars as well as a large BMW and Mini merchandise store. The main reason we were at the BMW World was to be really close to the BMW Museum when it opened, as this would make the timing for the rest of the day easier. We got to see all of the cars and engines that are important to BMW’s history. To save you most of the details of my part of the BMW presentation we gave in class, the most important pieces were the airplane engines that BMW started as a supplier of and the BMW Neue Klasse. 
was coffee. (We all ordered a coffee after. It was extremely good.) Then, we had to pick one exhibit in particular to focus on and answer a couple of questions with a partner. My partner and I chose the airplane exhibit, as aerospace is quite cool. There, they had many instantly recognizable planes and flying objects, though replicas and models, such as the Red Baron’s triplane, the Hindenburg, and the Wright Brother’s plane. Once we had all of the information we needed, we decided to rush through everything else that we thought might be interesting, primarily the astronomy and cosmology sections. Getting to learn (and remember) about outer space is one of the best and most interesting topics out there. Once we were done, we met back up with the class, and from there officially went out to the rest of our weekend’s adventures. It’s crazy to me that this is just another part of the HTS 2100 class, and I’m so glad that I decided to sign up for this class where I can learn and visit places that I likely wouldn’t have chosen to go myself.
5:38 PM, the 3:30 PM classes got to leave a little early to ensure that we made it with plenty of time. We were all good with trains until our last one, which we thought we were going to miss, got delayed, but people were getting food and so most people waited for the next one anyway. However, a trio of us didn’t get that memo, so we arrived in Munich an hour earlier than everyone else. We finally made it to our hostel at about 1:30 AM, and with breakfast at 7 AM, no one slept too well. From breakfast, we went to the FIZ, which is BMW’s information and R&D headquarters. We met with a few German interns, and they were our tour guides for the day. We went almost immediately to a Georgia Tech alum, Tomohiro, who currently works in acoustics, and his intern Nate, a current Georgia Tech student who was in this class last fall. 
knew no German a year ago definitely made me consider trying to get an internship for sometime next year. After learning about their jobs, we had lunch at the “small” cafeteria in the headquarters. Apparently, the one in the FIZ is substantially larger, but I guess that makes sense, as 15,000 people work there. We watched a few presentations after, and considering the little sleep we all got the previous night and the presentations being immediately after lunch, it was rather difficult to stay awake, but at least the topics were interesting. 
automated, meaning that there are tons of robots doing all of the welding and shaping of the body. We also saw the production of the engines, seats, and the pairing of engines to the transmissions and to the body. While this isn’t the first car factory I’ve toured (I visited Lamborghini before my senior year of high school), it won’t be the last car factory I’ll tour (I’m visiting Porsche around Thanksgiving). And though the cars we saw in production (3 Series coupes and wagons and 4 series coupes) aren’t as interesting to me as, say, a Lamborghini Huracan or a Porsche 911, it was very in depth, and we got to see it all come together, which was very cool. 
not on the way up. I started the hike with only a long-sleeve t-shirt and shorts. I decided not to make this hike in my slip-on Vans after how many times I slipped last time. Luckily, the rain held off for most of the way up. Because I played soccer the night before, knew I probably wouldn’t be able to fill up my water bottle, and sweated a decent amount on the way up, I was quite a bit dehydrated once we neared First. As we were climbing the last few stairs on the way to the First Cliff Walk, I had the worst cramp of my life (I don’t think I’ve had a cramp I’ve had since high school football) and both of my legs essentially locked up and I couldn’t move them. Needless to say, after this, I was much slower and actually drank some of my water.
hit this point, I swear the temperature dropped like twenty degrees, so I put my rain jacket and hoodie back on. We continued up from First to Faulhorn. This is where we realized the second surprise of the weekend—the Berghotel Faulhorn, where we were staying, was on a snow-capped peak. Being near the lakes in the valley and seeing the peaks was absolutely crazy. After a couple of pictures, we headed up, and it got extremely cold with the wind gusts. With a surprisingly limited number of slips on the way up, we made it at about 6:15 PM (the hike should’ve taken about 6 hours, and we took like 45 minutes worth of breaks on the way up). I got some crazy looks when I walked in with our group in shorts. We changed and had a soup and macaroni dinner, played some cards, and turned in early (read: before 10:00 PM). 
The third surprise of the weekend came when we woke up—it snowed about five inches overnight. We were advised to go back down in a very similar way that we came up, as the cliffs we had intended to hike by were snow-covered with low visibility. While hiking down with snow-covered paths (the only visible path markers were posts) seems pretty dangerous, the fresh-fallen snow had a much larger amount of grip and it was cold enough that any snow that stuck to you didn’t melt and the wind blew it off, so we managed to stay pretty dry. We made it back to the lake, which had much whiter surroundings from the new snow. From there, we went a different route as we had successfully made it down from the line where the snow fell. We took the long path to Bussalp, then Berglauenen, then took the train back to Interlaken. We found our Airbnb, had dinner (where I had fondue for the second time this semester), and explored the city a little. We again turned in pretty early—I think I managed 9 hours of sleep in back-to-back nights.
This morning, we went to Bern, Switzerland. There, we saw the Rose Garden overlooking the city, went to see some bears, and then had lunch. It was a very cool city, and I’m glad we made the stop there on the way back home. I’m writing this as we’re heading back to Metz. We have about a half of a mile of walking left today, which adds to the forty miles I’ve walked so far this weekend. I never would’ve expected that the first time I saw snow was in the first week of October, and I would’ve thought you were crazy if you told me I would’ve seen it and hiked through it, but it was an all around great experience and I’m happy that I was spontaneous enough to decide to tag along on this unique weekend.
I’ve played countless hours on every FIFA video game released since then (except this year’s release, FIFA 20, as I do not have a way to play it). After I began playing FIFA, I could also watch soccer and appreciate it. Not long after, my dad also began watching it and so on Saturday mornings, that’s what we would do if we weren’t busy—watch the Premier League and eat breakfast.
available data. Luckily, it turned out to be just where we were. 
without the guardrails. We passed by the Casino Monte Carlo, took some pictures of the cars parked out front, and made it most of the way around the track. Unfortunately, however, we were unable to complete the track because the Monaco Yacht Show was happening at the same time, and they had some parts by the water closed off. Still, seeing so much of such a famous track was a very cool experience. We had a very chill rest of the day and just walked around, went down to the beach again, and played even more cards.
are like miniature exams and need to be prepared for in a similar manner. Even so, I’ve been traveling (as evidenced by my travel-related posts). Here’s how I’ve managed to travel and try my best to keep up with school and the blog.
