Welcome to the published part of my life!

I know, I know I should have started studying for my final and should have gone back to my work after my trip to Germany. But before I did that I went on a trip to Seattle meeting my friend Matthias, who is studying in Berkeley, California right now. We both went to Germany for the “Ingenieurwissentschaftliches Kolleg” but planned the trip to Seattle before we knew we were going to Germany. So that’s why those trips were so close

Anyways. I took the bus at 5:30 am to go to Seattle and Matze took the plane and so we met at around 9:30 am in Seattle.

I don’t know why but I somehow assumed that Seattle is a boring, American city between an airport, a harbour and the Boeing Factory. But it is indeed a wonderful city!

We spend the whole morning walking around the huge marked, looking at all the seafood, veggies, bakery, meat… And we walked around the seawall, discovering the part of the city close to the water… It was just amazing weather… It really felt like holiday

(Public Market)

After we had lunch near the water we went to the place were the shuttle service to the Boeing Factory was supposed to pick us up. We went there and after some difficulties we finally managed to get into the shuttle and to the Boeing factory.

(the new “dreamliner”)

And what should I say: the trip to Boeing was definitely worth it! Everything was just huge! Made for planes, obviously . Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures on the tour, but I hope I can describe everything is so good, that you can picture it yourself….

The tour took us into the factory, on walkways under the roof of the construction hall. So we had a great overview over the whole working area there. We saw the construction of the 737, 777 and the 787 (787=new dreamliner)! It was very impressive! When you see all these huge planes and than all those little people working on them, you can not imagine that the work of one person could really make any difference… There must be such a good organisation an management of all the personnel resources they have… incredible!

And then in the last hall we saw the very first 787! The prototype! It was painted already but they were still working on it, testing stuff and so on… And because they the schedule had already been delayed, they moved all the engineers on the floor of the construction hall (usually they have normal offices) right in front of the plane! So that they can communicate faster, and see the product right in front of there eyes all the time! That looked so funny All those little people sitting on desks next to each other in a huge area in front of this massive plane…. funny….

I would really like to know if this actually made the process faster… I doubt it….

On the way back in the shuttle we discovered that there were three pilots in the shuttle with us who are flying the Boeing 777! Isn’t that crazy?! So we talked to them all the way back (around 30min) and asked all the questions we always wanted to ask if we would meet a pilot… and more )

It was super interesting and those guys where also just normal people but doing a cool job. 4-8 workdays a month and between those days always short holidays at places all around the world… There are worse jobs out there…. *g*

After we got back to Seattle we went up the Space Needle and enjoyed the view…

[wpvideo wy3IAFsa w=400]

From the top of this huge building we saw, that there were some sculptures in a green park near the water, so we decided to go there… And we found the “Olympic Sculpture Park” of the Seattle Art Museum. A park full of sculptures from artists even I knew by name! And everything was for free!

(Richard Serra again, the guy who did the sculpture at the Toronto airport aswell)

(Alexander Calder,I knew it was him without looking at the sign… I was pround )

(Alexander Calder again)

(design exhibition)

The discovering of these great art pieces really made my day because I wasn’t expecting it at all!

Matze was kinda looking at me as if I’m crazy because I walked around with a big smile on my face, taking pictures of everything and jumping around totally happy… But I guess that’s just me *hihi*

[wpvideo 0WHf7Nrt w=400]

After that we saw an incredible sunset and had a really great dinner at a Brasillian restaurant.

The next day we were planning to do a Whale Watching Tour. But unfortunatelly it was cancelled and we did a little bit more sight seeing.

(public libraty)

(a random building in downtown)

When we were already heading back to the place were the bus to Vancouver was leaving, we discovered that the Dalaylama was in Seattle that day, and that we were at the right place at the right time:

[wpvideo rFW2qSio w=400]

;D

More picture are available for download here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 14:08 and is filed under Seattle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.