Back again Leute!
There is so much happening in Germany right now and I have so much that I want to review from this past week, so let’s get started.
This week, my supervisors were both in Munich for a healthtech conference, so I had the entire office to myself, which was both a blessing and a curse. While it is nice to have the office to myself and be able to jam out to music while getting my work done, I do have to say that it gets a bit lonely. My supervisor, Severin, is the only other person at Formly that works in person, so since he was gone I had nobody to talk to during the day. Normally that wouldn’t bother me, but I really want to work on my German conversational skills, so that becomes increasingly harder when the only person that speaks German in the office isn’t there. Other than that, I worked on customer prospecting, which to anyone that knows what that means, knows it was a tedious, long week for me.
My task was clear, but there weren’t necessarily any expectations for what I needed to prepare. I find that this is common in my workplace and is the only aspect that confuses me. I am given a clear task, but usually the deliverable is at my own discretion. For example, last week I was tasked to do a competitor analysis and was told that I would be presenting this information to the CEO and CTO. They asked specifically for a Google doc, but I felt that I needed to prepare a bit more in order to show that I am going above and beyond. With that being said, I prepared a quick google slide presentation to show along with a comparison matrix. I will be presenting this information this upcoming week, so hopefully I can show that I worked hard on this project.
Overall, I’d say that there really isn’t too many areas of unknowns for me, because I am either able to just ask for clarification, or I am able to decide on my own what the best solution is. If I do have to navigate it, I will either send a message on Slack or ask Severin, who works right across the table from me. This was a bit harder while my supervisors were out of town, but my occupied most of the week for me.
Outside of work, our group has been very active.
On Saturday, we decided to take a trip to Rostock, which is about two and a half hours north of Berlin. From there, we took an S-Bahn to Warnemünde, which is a small town that is on the Baltic Sea. We were able to find some cool lighthouses and shop in some of the local stores. One of my favorite pictures from Warnemünde is when I was able to take a picture with an Eisbär (polar bear).
After we were done with Warnemünde, we took the S-Bahn back to main city Rostock and walked around a bit more. Rostock has been one of the more picturesque cities we have been to so far, as the architecture is closer to the traditional German style. The building that blew me away the most was definitely the red building pictured below.
Even after our adventure yesterday, our group wanted to do another day trip today. We didn’t go as far, but we went to Potsdam, which is only a 30 minute S-Bahn ride outside of Berlin. We went to an impressionism exhibit at the Potsdam Museum, where many works by famous impressionist painter Claude Monet were on display. I found out that I really connect to impressionist art styles, as it is a more accessible style, compared to others like abstract or modern art.
After the museum, we had a nice lunch and headed over to Schloss Sansoucci. Potsdam is known for having multiple palaces, but this palace was basically three in one. We explored the grounds for about 2 hours and still were unable to see every aspect of the area. We are making plans to go visit more palaces and castles on Sundays in the future, so hopefully we will be able to revisit the area and see what we missed.
Overall, this week has been one of the more exciting weeks so far, but just you wait. I have so many adventures already scheduled for the next 3 weeks, so make sure you come read about them!
Until next week,
Tschüss!!