Students:Daniel Kurowski

About me
I'm a 22-year-old student originally from Brno and also living there. I study at Masaryk university - my subjects are Politics and Environmental Studies. I like music, debating, and being active. More about me here.

Sustainability and me
Sustainability includes quite a lot areas which we can talk about - energy, water, traffic, food, place, lifestyle etc. I'm going to write about sustainability in general. It means 'necessity' to me. I simply think that the current "western" lifestyle can not be managed (worldwide), including all consequences such as animal extinction, the devastation of nature, animal abuse, political corruption, negligence of human rights, selfishness of people, working in pointless jobs etc. We can't live the same way as we do just simply because it can't work over the longer term - politically, socially, environmentally...

Also, as I believe in God, I believe that I am (we are) responsible for the land He gave us and I am obliged to take care of it. But there is also an important secular reason for why we should live sustainably (if animals and nature is not the only reason) - because of our children. If we want to have some, we should give them a place where they can live and bring them up in a way that makes them spiritually happy. This, I think, is not - because of what I described above and many other matters - going to happen nowadays.

Arrival day, 9th of June
After such a long journey by mini-bus we finally arrived in Lüneburg. The warm up activity was really successful because the adjective added to everyone's first name was a good hint to recall our names. Before going asleep we had an interesting discussion on sustainability. It started as an abstract topic and we went through many related subtopics like solar and wind energy, coal mining, politics and its impact, etc.

Day 1, 10th of June
Nice guided tour in the nice Lüneburg city center. The weather was nice. After a great lunch we had a lecture about the sustanability concept by one of the professors of the university. Then two students from oikos prepared for us a workshop where we heard something about student participation and then we tried to think up a few problems at our schools and suggest a project as a solution. Tasty dinner and free time in the evening.

Day 2, 11th of June
The most interesting information of the third day was definitely the fact that landfills can produce energy. :-) So the visit to a renewable energy power-plant and landfill was probably the best thing. Also the visit to Hamburg was impressive, especially the tunnel under the Elbe river.

Day 3, 12th of June
Well yeah, the sheep and dogs taking care of them were really cool, I've never seen that before as well as a real live calf. The most interesting finding of today - I'm probably too townish. Also I learned about an interesting fishing sustainability game.

Day 4, 13th of June
In the morning we heard an idealistic green party man and then we've tried to summarize in few words what a 'good and sustainable life' means to us, which I found quite difficult when using only a few words. In the afternoon, we went to Hamburg again to see a sustainable urban housing project which was quite interesting but still it was just one part of a really sustainable life - as Aggie said - to live in sustainable houses does not mean to live sustainably. The bunker from WWII was an interesting idea of how we can make something useful from an ugly old object.

Day 5, 14th of June
The last day of our trip we heard some interesting ideas about the Leuphana innovation incubator. Then we discussed a topic in a style I really like - like circulating around three tables and discussing different topics - agriculture, energy management and green business possibilities. I liked that we brainstormed maps of ideas which can be used, extended and realized in the future.

Final evaluation
When leaving my home I was curious about what would happen. Now I can say that the trip was really great - I've learnt many new things, also many things connected together in my mind, I've visited interesting places, seen things working (like PV etc.), got to know new people and it gave me another impulse to do something in my city/at my school. Mostly I've enjoyed the first day when we were creating the student projects, then I really liked the excurtion to the landfill at Neu Wulmstorf and also the last day when we were brainstorming. Thanks so much to Andrew and Dana, to our guides, to the EU for covering the costs and all the people who were there for making such a great atmosphere.