Blue Overalls

So much time, such a little thing. For the past week and one half I was working in the autoparts manufacturing plant owned by Franz Schabmueller.

The first day I came in through the fingerprint identification locked doors into the manufacturing plant and was issued a locker key, a pair of calipers, and blueprints for my first project by my new boss. Her Stoehr is a very Bayerish man. He is about 50 years old, the same height as me, with silver hair, a young grin, and twinkling blue eyes. He laughs a lot, and has a thick Bayerish accent. It is hard enough to understand him when he speaks German with this accent, but he also wants me to learn the southern German dialect of Bayerish. He would say something to me in Bayerish, make me think that I know even less German than I know, then repeat it in Hoch Deutsch (High German) with his rumbling accent, so I was never quite sure when to listen. He was very hard to understand.

The vise that I was supposed to make did not look complicated to make, and while Franz had assured me that it would take me all week to complete, I was positive that I could finish by the end of the next day. After all, we had 8 hours of work time per day. As I already mentioned, the hours were long, from 7 till 3:30, but I did not mention the break time. We had fifteen minutes to eat breakfast from 9 till 9:15, and then fifteen minted to eat lunch, from 12 to 12:15. It is not a pleasure cruise at work.

Florian helped me the first day, teaching me how to read the blueprints and use machines to turn scrap metal into what was drawn on paper. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it. I did not feel excited by it, but it is nice to focus on a on one's work and let your mind go. He helped me use a milling machine to get the steel to within one millimeter of where I wanted it, and told me to file the rest of it off. My shoulder, which is injured from rowing, began to hurt five minutes into the filing, but I kept going, thinking that the pain must have just been from sleeping on it wrong the night before. After an hour of filing, I found out that I was wrong and had to stop. I checked on my progress and saw that I still had .4 millimeters to go. After an hour of filing! The shoulder injury was no problem, as I simply let Herr Stoehr know, and he taught me how to use the machines with greater precision.

That is, of course, if you are allowed to do it by yourself. I felt myself growing restless when I had to watch another worker doing part of my job for me, to show me how it was done. It was necessary, because I could not have learned how to use the machines just by looking at them. When I was confined to watching or was frustrated with having to re-do a piece that Herr Stoehr dubbed "nicht schoen" (not pretty), sometimes I would start to notice that my feet were hurting from standing so long. Florian kept us laughing, which helped to take my mind off of the frustrations of work.

Notice the hole in his shirt? That is from when the sparks from the buzz-saw he was using caught fire to it and burned the hole. Later in the same day one of the younger employees started using the same machine that I am using in the above picture, but did not attach the steel that he was going to cut properly. So when he started the machine, the ten pound hunk flew out of the machine. Florian was busy filing at the time, and barely missed getting hit by jumping over the low flying cylinder of death. He gave it a surprised look when it slammed into the wall, then went back to his filing without a word. Everyone in the shop burst out laughing, except for the boy who's fault it had been.

By the end of the week, I had used milling, spinning and drilling machines, not to mention files and saws, to finish my project. Franz and Herr Stoehr were spot on with their estimates - I made the final touches halfway through Friday. I don't know why the lighting is weird in this picture...
I stopped three days early of two weeks because of a change in plans to go see my friend from rowing, Kingdon, up in Norway. His parents have a hotel up there, and that is where he lives for the summer. I leave tomorrow to Oslo, then take the overnight bus and arrive in his harbor at six in the morning. If you want to see pictures of where I will be staying, go to http://www.balestrand.com/. My next post will be from Norway!