First contact
The only time I had heard of Wolfsburg before was in the sport pages of the newspaper, checking the results of the German football league (I'm a football freak). I didn't know where it was and what it was like.
Wolfsburg is in NiederSachsen, south of Hamburg and about 200km east of Berlin. Exactly 1000km from my home. I'd have to find a place to stay there. VW had sent me a list of people and offices to contact to rent a room. But I was very uncomfortable calling those people cause I had never really praticed my German outside of university. On top of that I was back in Lyon and dealing with my last semester in France. So I didn't put a lot of effort into sorting things out. But November was already here and it was getting rather urgent. My parents and I decided that the best thing was to go there. I called the guy from the translation dpt (the one that had sent me the test) and asked if it would possible to meet him. We set up a meeting during my holiday break.
So one November morning we left and drove all the way to North Germany with our car. I had booked an hotel room in Braunschweig, a city right next to Wolfsburg. We arrived late in the evening and the next day, we went to Wolfsburg. That was quite a shock. Wob is not a nice city when you first see it. Half of it is actually the VW factory.
One big pedestrian street with shops and a small mall. And then row of appartments building that all look the same. I don't even remember what we did in town that day but I recall feeling like crap. I really hated it. I tried to contact the people on the list to find a room, but that was a disaster. I was in that phone booth calling numbers after numbers and nothing was available and I really had trouble speaking German. On the morning of the second day, I had the appointment with my soon-to-be boss. It went well, he is a very quiet man. Showed me where my desk would be, introduced to the people I would work with. Said he'd help me find a room. The plant was very impressive, huge. At 10am, I was done. My father asked "What do we do now?". "We drive back home as fast as we can".
Overall, the trip had been rather useless. Ugly town, problems with the language, still no room. I was really demoralized about the whole thing. And to top it all, my parents noticed it and started worrying about me going there for a long time.
Wolfsburg is in NiederSachsen, south of Hamburg and about 200km east of Berlin. Exactly 1000km from my home. I'd have to find a place to stay there. VW had sent me a list of people and offices to contact to rent a room. But I was very uncomfortable calling those people cause I had never really praticed my German outside of university. On top of that I was back in Lyon and dealing with my last semester in France. So I didn't put a lot of effort into sorting things out. But November was already here and it was getting rather urgent. My parents and I decided that the best thing was to go there. I called the guy from the translation dpt (the one that had sent me the test) and asked if it would possible to meet him. We set up a meeting during my holiday break.
So one November morning we left and drove all the way to North Germany with our car. I had booked an hotel room in Braunschweig, a city right next to Wolfsburg. We arrived late in the evening and the next day, we went to Wolfsburg. That was quite a shock. Wob is not a nice city when you first see it. Half of it is actually the VW factory.
One big pedestrian street with shops and a small mall. And then row of appartments building that all look the same. I don't even remember what we did in town that day but I recall feeling like crap. I really hated it. I tried to contact the people on the list to find a room, but that was a disaster. I was in that phone booth calling numbers after numbers and nothing was available and I really had trouble speaking German. On the morning of the second day, I had the appointment with my soon-to-be boss. It went well, he is a very quiet man. Showed me where my desk would be, introduced to the people I would work with. Said he'd help me find a room. The plant was very impressive, huge. At 10am, I was done. My father asked "What do we do now?". "We drive back home as fast as we can".
Overall, the trip had been rather useless. Ugly town, problems with the language, still no room. I was really demoralized about the whole thing. And to top it all, my parents noticed it and started worrying about me going there for a long time.
posted by Noute @ 8:37 PM
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