We continue to share the favorite destinations for our SBCC faculty, staff, and students.
“Germany!" was the answer that Raeannae Napoleon gave us after we asked her about her favorite destination to travel. Let’s find out why she would always choose Germany…
Napoleon has been the program director for the study abroad program in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands twice already. We think that shows how in love she is with her chosen destination. For her, the German history in the sciences and specifically in chemistry and engineering were the reason to choose the country of Germany. In her CHEM 101 classes at SBCC, she already started to use examples from German institutions like Max Planck or Erwin Schrodinger.
Major headquarters for worldwide chemical manufacturers have their locations in Germany, which she is very impressed by. Besides that, Germany is also a leader in auto manufacturing for brands such as VW, BMW, and Porsche. In addition to visiting an amazing country and seeing the cultural sites, there is amazing science to learn about as well.
According to Napoleon, a must-see is the car factory and exhibition space of Volkswagen in Dresden. It’s called (in English) the “Transparent Factory”. She loves that they manufacture the VW Golf there and that the engineering floor is so clean that you could seriously eat off the floors! The building itself is absolutely stunning since it is made out of glass and the location in the city of Dresden is always an amazing place to visit for her.
Talking about local experiences Napoleon made, eating currywurst, getting coffee, taking the trains, walking around, paying attention to the street art, and just relaxing and looking around are on top of her list.
Germany is a diverse country that is somehow “old fashioned” with its castles, cathedrals, and monuments, but at the same time, it also has high-end cars, music, and trendsetting fashion.
For Napoleon, finding so many people who are speaking Spanish was really unexpected. Spain isn’t far from Germany, so she would have expected to meet some Spanish people. Since so many people know so many languages, oftentimes you will meet someone that considers themselves more fluent in Spanish than English.
The last time Napoleon visited Germany she actually met a Russian scientist who preferred to speak in Spanish over English and he really connected with the Latino/a/x students whose first language was Spanish, when he switched over to speaking in Spanish.
There are so many places and things to explore in Germany, we would not be surprised if Napoleon will take another group of students there in the future.
Comments