First Day in Munich

And just like that, England is over. Christmas is over. New Year’s Eve is over. With all that behind me, it’s time to begin the next chapter in what I consider the most beautiful state capital in southern Germany: Munich.

I arrived last night and barely had time to move into my new place before my first day of work. Fortunately, the day didn’t start until 10 a.m., which made for a relaxed introduction to both the city and my new internship.

The office building made a good first impression - beautiful from the outside and modern on the inside, although it did have a certain corporate business-school vibe in places.

At reception, I was greeted by C, who immediately introduced herself by her first name and explained that everyone in the company was on a first-name basis. At first, I assumed that applied within our department, but I quickly discovered that almost everyone addressed each other informally. It created a friendly atmosphere and made me feel surprisingly welcome.

After a brief introduction, I received my first assignment: testing a questionnaire. It reminded me a lot of previous survey projects I had worked on. Fortunately, there were only a few errors to be found and almost no unusual content issues. Still, testing all the different filter paths and scenarios kept me busy for about an hour.

Lunch was in the company cafeteria. Initially, the prices seemed a bit high, but after comparing them with the restaurant menus I saw on my walk home, the cafeteria suddenly looked like a bargain. In the end, I bought two bread rolls. I accidentally used the wrong (dialect) word and then walked to the wrong checkout counter, providing amusement for the people around me.

The second half of the day brought one of the classic internship challenges: there wasn’t much work available. Only three people from our department were in the office, while everyone else was on holiday and wouldn’t return until Monday. To keep me occupied, I was asked to prepare a proposal. It sounded exciting, but in reality it involved replacing company names in a template and updating the copyright year in a few graphics. Perhaps January isn’t the most thrilling time to start an internship.

Once that was finished, C gave me more background material to read and told me I could leave whenever I felt I had read enough. Since I needed to reach my weekly hours, I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the company intranet, reading internal documents, and creating templates for my timesheets and internship reports.

I finally headed home around 5:30 p.m.

Thanks to mobile internet, I even managed to find a supermarket, although not without taking a rather large detour. At least breakfast for the next morning was secured.

The evening, I spent on my Harvard coursework (thankfully that would be finished soon), took care of a few administrative tasks, and prepared for another early start the next day.

Overall, not a spectacular first day, but a positive one.