Brno to Bratislava, Slovakia – First I stopped at the VW Factory on the outskirts of the city. It took a week to organise a tour, they normally only do groups 130 euro per group but they made an exception for me and did the tour for 65 euro. I had my own personal tour guide for the 90 minute tour, no photos allowed. This place employs 12,000 people working around the clock, it is huge with all the amenities of a small town, a police force, hospital, a bus service, school, etc. VW looks after their employees.
We started with the Stamping building where huge robot presses stamp out the panels for a vehicle. There is quality control at each step. Next we moved to another building where the panels are welded together into a complete body after which they go to the Paint shop via an underground tunnel. Almost everything is done by robots except for the quality control which is done by humans. The Paint shop was not part of this tour so next we went to the Drive train building where the engines, gearboxes and all the undercarriage components are assempled, lots of humans here. The final step called the Marriage when the painted body is lowered onto the drive train is done in another building which was also not part of the tour. Overall a very interesting experience to add to my collection of factory tours hahaha.
I wandered around the old town for a few hours, lots of tourists and tour groups finally settling down in a microbrewery which I discovered on my last visit, very nice. I was here in 2013 at the same time of the year, read all about it here – Bratislava 2013.
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Chris's space 