Into the Looking Glass

One of the things which we totally love about the trip, is visiting different factories and learning how the different products are made. After missing a chance to go on the Mercedes factory tour we decided we had  to make it to at least one German car factory tour, and thus we made our way to the Gläserne Manufaktur.

The Glass Factory is where Volkswagen does the final assembly of its luxury sedan, the Phaeton. Its  located in Dresden, and though we didn't explore the city at all, it did look rather charming. True to its name, the factory's is almost completely made out of glass, and looks amazing at night as can be seen from the picture below.

Within the factory, there is a Kugelhaus, which allows visitors to view all the Volkswagen commercials over the past 50 years. Of course there is the hugely popular Darth Vader one, but even before that they had some hilarious advertisements though for some reason I can't seem to find them on youtube. Suffice to say, we were fairly entertained for quite a while watching the various advertisements. There is also a meeting/ conference room which is available for rental if you are so inclined, though there was no one there the day we were visiting. 

Our group was fairly large but our tour guide did the best she could. No photos are allowed inside the factory at all, so any photos in this entry will be just what's available online. The Phaetons are made to order, and since the factory is only for final assembly, everything has to be brought in from outside Dresden. Being German, they have of course made sure that everything is as efficient as possible and at the same time, minimizes their carbon footprint. You can read all about it on their website thus I won't repeat it here. 

We were suitably impressed by the thought process they had, from the design of the factory, to how the assembly line should be to ensuring birds won't fly into the building. Seem like most of the factories in Europe are built with this kind of thinking, whereas in Asia it just seems to be more of what can you squeeze out from the space. It was fascinating how quiet everything was and though we could only observe the assembly of the cars from a platform, it was still pretty amazing. I had expected it to be a lot nosier, something like what we experienced in the Ducati factory but this was nicely quiet enough to hear what the guide was saying. 

photo credit : volkswagen

After the tour ended, we had dinner at the cafe within the factory and ended up chatting with the waiter. Surprise surprise, he actually knows where Singapore is! He has a friend working or worked in Singapore (can't remember) and he actually wants to come over as well. It's usually a surprise when people actually know where Singapore is since half the time they think we are part of China. A nice ending to the day before we made our way to Munich.