Hi everyone, this week I had the pleasure of going to Munich for the weekend with AJ. It was such an incredible city and I hope that one day I can go back! Munich felt extremely different from Berlin. For one the culture seemed a lot more relaxed and friendly than Berlin. People were much more willing to make small talk, and overall just seemed a lot less up-tight.
In Munich we saw so many stunning palaces, churches, and other buildings. My favorite place we saw was the Residenz– an old palace of the Bavarian royal family. As I toured around the palace I was left awestruck around every corner. Amazing paintings, fountains, and other ornate decorations were in every room. Another palace we toured, the Nymphenburg Palace, hosted one of the most impressive rooms I have ever seen (photo below). It genuinely did not feel real standing in such a grand and opulent room. I can’t fathom all the manhours, resources, and money that went into building such an impressive room. Another very cool experience was touring the FC Bayern stadium. It is such an iconic and impressive stadium that even though I’m not a super big fan I loved it. I also got to take a picture with a cardboard cutout of my favorite player on the team. The stadium was even more impressive in person than on tv; however, the most impressive part to me was the ticket pricing. The tour guide said that the expensive seats were all around 80 euros, and most Germans found that pricing to be ridiculous. This to me was mind-boggling, as for many sports events in America 80ish dollars can barely get you nose-bleed seats.
Another part of Munich I loved was the food. We ended up walking a ton each day, so by the end we had worked up quite the appetite. Munich’s food did not let us down, except for one night when we went to McDonald’s, it was without a doubt the best food I have had so far. From traditional soft pretzels to Leberkase, it was all delectable.
In my time here so far I have gained and improved upon many soft skills. For one I think I have truly become flexible. Working in another culture and language than I am used to has given rise to a lot of situations where I need to be flexible. There are many times when I have to put in extra work to fully understand something, like for instance the technical wording on an invoice, because of this. This has caused me to become extremely flexible and fluid between my English finance knowledge and my newfound German finance knowledge. I find myself drawing upon both sources to solve problems. I also think my communication and teamwork skills have improved greatly. In my internship, I am constantly working with other people on a variety of things, and this has naturally caused these skills to improve. I also think this internship has helped me foster a greater sense of independence and assertiveness in the workplace. While I can effectively work in a team, I can also function just fine on my own and make sure my voice is heard. I think this is because the work environment at Kenbi can oftentimes be very fluid meaning sometimes you need to take charge and figure out stuff on your own.
As for hard skills, I have also improved and gained many. Firstly my Excel skills have improved tremendously. Before this I had a basic knowledge of Excel from Pitt business classes, they were just that– basic. I feel this internship has fine-tuned and improved these skills to a point where I can put “proficient in Excel” on my resume and be 100% confident in it. A brand new hard skill I gained is PowerBI. It took some time to learn, but I am now confident in its usage. Lastly, my skill level with the German language has gone up greatly. Because I use it every work day all day, my language skills have improved significantly.
In regards to global competencies and navigating cross-cultural situations, I have had ample opportunity to work on this. My knowledge of the German language has been key in this, as it has made bridging the gap between me and my coworkers a lot easier. When there is confusion about something between my knowledge of German and their knowledge of English we can almost always figure it out. Every day on the job, I am working to navigate these situations. As such I have been improving at this constantly.