My Travel Diary: From Schiltach to Cincinnati

Let me introduce myself

My name is Laura and I’m doing an apprenticeship as an industrial clerk with an additional qualification in international business management at VEGA Grieshaber KG in Germany. As an apprentice I change departments every two or three months to try my hand at various roles and to gain insight in different fields. As part of my internship, I have the chance to work six weeks abroad at a VEGA subsidiary. This is the reason why I’m working now at VEGA Americas in the Marketing department. In this blog post I would like to give you a little insight about my travel and working experience in the US.

Fears and doubts

At the beginning I was very excited and nervous because I have never traveled alone nor had I been to America before this trip. I also had some doubts that my language skills were not good enough to understand and communicate well with my American colleagues. After I managed to make all my flights and to enter the USA (with some difficulties) Annie, an employee from the Marketing department, picked me up and helped me to get my rental car. She also explained me how to drive an automatic car, which I would also love to drive in Germany because it’s easier to drive and you never have to worry about stalling out your car. 

First week at VEGA Americas

At my first week at VEGA Americas I mostly prepared my projects from Germany which I had to present to some members of the Marketing department. Beyond that, I did some work for the VEGA employee store and I completed data analysis. When I first started working in America, I was very surprised at how many people would make small talk with me throughout the day. Employees, even ones I did not know, asked me all the time how I was and how my day was going. It took some getting used to, but it was nice to talk to everyone.

Customer events

As a member of the Marketing department I had the chance to participate in different customer events. So I went for the first time in my life to a baseball game. Even if the Cincinnati Reds lost it was a great atmosphere at the stadium. One day later I went to the MadTree Brewery. We went on a tour through the brewery, which also uses VEGA products. After that we had a really good dinner and we tasted different sorts of beer, which are almost as good as the German beer. ;-).  

The last customer event where I participated was a trip to the Cincinnati Zoo. We get divided into two teams, the Giraffes and the Tigers. Each team had to answer not only questions about animals and the zoo, but we also had to make pictures from our team with special animals, which was very funny.

My projects

As I already mentioned I took care of two projects from Germany which both concerned VEGA’s CRM tool. I showed my American Marketing colleagues how we use the CRM to follow up with customers who come to our training seminars and trade shows. It was especially interesting for me to see how VEGA Americas gathers and uses data from an exhibition and in the end I think we could both learn from each other.

My conclusion

Despite the fact that I was really scared at the beginning it was a great experience to work abroad and to travel alone. Staying abroad is in my view the best possibility to expand one’s mind because you can always learn from different cultures. I also feel like I am more independent now and I could improve my language skills. I experienced the American people as very friendly and open-minded. When they heard my accent they were always curious where I come from and interested in the German culture.

Fortunately I had the chance to make some great contacts at VEGA Americas; some of the employees even spent their free time with me. In my opinion this was the reason why I never felt homesick at all. I would like to say thank you to VEGA Americas and especially to the Marketing department for the great time and integration.