daverea.com

As promised, it’s time to post a few more details about this past week’s trip to Germany…

GM’s standard policy is to fly all International travel in business class – which was a treat for myself and our other relatively-new engineer, Ken… Neither of us had ever flown bizclass before. We left Rochester on Sunday afternoon after an uneventful check-in. We flew through Washington-Dulles, and spent a few minutes in the international lounge before heading for the 747 that would take us to Frankfurt.

The experience on the plane was in large part very nice. The food was nice, and the staff was top-notch. Two glasses of red wine and one big meal later, we switched off the lights and I managed to nab a couple hours’ sleep before the breakfast cart was wheeled out and hour prior to landing. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, our luggage didn’t quite make the connection in DC. We spent a few minutes at the airport arranging for it to be delivered to the hotel, and we were assured that our bags would be on the next flight over.

After renting a car and finding an ATM (and thus some cash for the week), we made our way to the hotel and checked in. Fortunately, there were rooms available, and we all got to clean up a bit before heading for the office. Within the hour, we ended up there, meeting our german counterparts and colleagues at the Adam-Opel fuel cell facility. Lunch was found at a nearby Turkish sit-down fast-food eatery.

Turkish Kebab meat cooks on a rotating skewer…

After spending the afternoon touring the labs and running a few tests, I went out to find some dinner with our manager. We ended up finding a nice German restaurant, not far from the hotel, where the wait staff was friendly and helpful in deciphering the German-only menu. After a delicious meal and a quick stop for dessert at a near by confectionary, we headed back to the hotel.

The next day took us to neighboring Russelsheim, a city about 40 minutes from Mainz, home of Opel’s main design and manufacturing facilities. We spent the morning hearing presentations from various higer-ups in the GM Fuel Cell chain of command, and then headed to the Opel EMC chambers for the afternoon. This was a treat – for the eyes and the geek-at-heart alike. We toured giant anechoic radio-isolation chambers where cars are tested for interference and emissions, and we met some extremely talented EMC engineers.

After returning to Mainz Tuesday evening, Ken and I headed out in search of some good food – and found ourselves at Incontro, a high-end Italian restaurant in Mainz’s restaurant-row. While we ate, we met a trio of Hewlett-Packard salesmen at the neighboring table, one of which actually serves our division at GM! Our “small world” factor satisfied for the night, we continued to chat with the gentlemen, enjoy a few glasses of Chianti, and even spend some time with a dog that was along for dinner at another neighboring table! It would be nice if well-behaved pets were allowed to join their owners for dinner-out here in the ‘states…

A four-legged friend who joined us for dinner…

Wednesday brought more fun and excitement at work: we spent the day at the Adam-Opel vehicle testing facility in Dudenhofen. Surrounded by camouflaged cars (some of which were being driven very fast), we performed a variety of tests on our own hydrogen-powered masterpiece. After a few harrowing hours of coding and recoding in the morning, we finally hit the ring-shaped track after lunch. The track was graded and separated into lanes according to speed – the faster you drove, the higher up the banked ring you went. Unfortunately, cameras of any kind were forbidden (verboten!), so we couldn’t take away any fun “look at us posing with the fuel cell!” photos. Not that we could post them here if we had them!

Wednesday evening found us dining at another great Italian restaurant, where Bob (another of our engineering cadre) managed to translate enough of the menu items for us to land some great food. On Thursday, we headed back to Opel-Mainz, where we worked in the labs through the day and enjoyed another delicious Turkish lunch.

On Friday, we spent a few minutes at Opel saying our goodbyes, then headed back towards Frankfurt to catch our flight home. We arrived a bit early, so we ended up having a little more time at the gate to marvel at the plane. I never cease to be amazed how incredibly freakin huge a Boeing 747 is. Just the landing gear alone are a marvel, and I ccould stare into the bell of those giant GE jet engines a hundred flights over and not shed that little-kid awe blended with engineer’s curiosity.

The flight home was uneventful, but I managed to contract some manner of bug at some point between Frankfurt and DC. Three days later, they’ve got me on Zithro to stomp out a nice little case of bronchitis. But overall, the trip was a success: we got all the data we needed, had a grand time meeting our fellow engineers at GM-Opel and driving fun vehicles, and even managed to enjoy ourselves the rest of the time, too… All that said, I’m glad to be home, reunited with my family. In the end, that’s whats most important.

The trip gallery is Here…