Students:Diana Dobrovodská

About me

I'm 21 years old and I'm from Slovakia and live in a town called Trnava which lies a few kilometres from the capital Bratislava. My subject of study is International Development Studies at Palacky University in Olomouc where I am a first year student. I love winter and especially snowboarding! Also I love animals and that's why I have 7 gerbils and 2 turtles at home. :) I'm very excited about this trip because I'm very interested in meeting new people as well as travelling! :)

Sustainability

For me sustainability means the way people can live or learn to live on the Earth without constantly damaging it. I am very sorry that people can't find a way to be satisfied without hurting our planet at the same time. People tend to think they are the strongest and the brightest, but they forget nature is the one with all the power. I think we all have a lot of work to do to start acting like aware people and not hide our heads in the sand. I hope this trip will help us all to realize that there are other ways to be satisfied without doing harm.

Day 1

Thirteen of us met in front of the main train station in Prague, we got into bus at 11.30 and hit the road. After 8 hours we arrived at our pension Restaurant im Sportpark in Luneburg. After a quick look in our room we went downstairs to have a perfect dinner! After that we sat outside playing a name game to easily remember everybody and afterwards discussed what sustainability means.

Day 2

We woke up to a beautiful sunny day which we started with a delicious breakfast, after which we met our guides Insa and Marlene, who took us for a city tour where we learned very interesting things about Luneburg. After the tour we went to the Leuphana University campus where we had lunch in the mensa. After lunch we had a presentation by Maik Adomssent on Basic concepts of sustainable development after which two students introduced us to the OIKOS initiative and showed us their activities in the university field and conducted a workshop with us. We came back to our hotel and had a great dinner.

Day 3

First thing in the morning we went to the University and started with a lecture about renewable energy for the city of Luneburg presented by Alexa Lutzenberger. They have a very ambitious plan of reaching 100% renewable energy within 50 years. After this we had a campus tour with Irmhild Bruggen where we learned about the university's actions towards sustainability, such as long term cups for coffee or a campus garden for students. In the second part of the day we drove to the former landfill in Neu Wulmstorf where we had an excellent tour guided by Tilmann Wolfsteller who showed us how a landfill can be used for the production of electricity. The last thing on the schedule was free time in Hamburg where we enjoyed a beautiful view from a tower and an exhausting walk back to the bus which took us back to Luneburg to have an excellent dinner again.

Day 4

We visited the Alfred Toepfer Academy for Nature Conservation in the small town of Schneverdingen where we learned something about communicating with the community from Susanne Eilers. Than we moved to Luneburg Heath and had a guided tour around the reservation where we saw also sheepdogs doing their jobs. After that we moved to an organic farm where Ralf Weber showed us how Demeter agriculture is done. Not only do they exclude the use of synthetic fertilisers and chemical plant protection agents in agricultural crop production, but they also require very specific measures to strengthen the life processes in soil and foodstuffs. Than we visited their organic shop and went back to Luneburg. After dinner some of us went for a beer and later karaoke and disco. :)

Day 5

We started the day at the University where we listened to a member of the German Green Party from the Luneburg town council. We found out that the allocation of seats for the Green Party in Luneburg is 28.7% and for the rest of Germany it is 10 to 13%. We also discussed the history of the Green Party in Germany. After that we met representatives of NGO DialogS who told us something about education and participation of the community in creating a sustainable life in Luneburg. In the second part of the day we visited Hamburg again. We visited the International Building Exhibition IBA where we saw new Green Houses allocated on the island on the Elbe. The final stop was the Energy Bunker which has been converted into energy storage and which also generates energy itself.

Day 6

The day started with a lecture about the Luneburg Innovation Incubator by Marcus Falke after which we followed presentations of projects by PhD students and than discussed each one of them during a world cafe. Then we loaded onto the bus and after a very long drive got back in Prague.

Summary

First of all, I would love to thank Dana and Andrew for the gorgeous experience they gave to all of us by organizing this trip! It is a great idea and I have to say I improved my knowledge of sustainability in many ways and also found out I still have many things to learn! I think i can't actually highlight just one thing from the whole trip. I really loved the Landfill excursion because I didn't know there are so many ways to use it. Also Tilmann Wolfsteller was a very lovely guy who had an answer for every question we asked. Then there was a great trip to an organic farm before which I didn't even know that something like Demeter agriculture even exists. I loved the part where they showed us cows and chickens because they looked very healthy. The final thing that made this trip a beautiful experience for me was the participation of the community in sustainability projects. I was absolutely amazed by the awareness of people in Germany and I realised we have so much work to do! I was surprised by the amount of the bikes parked in front of the University and also the amount of people we saw on bikes everywhere we looked! I am actually not able to imagine this would happen in Slovakia or in the Czech Republic in near future because people here are trying to be more and more comfortable and are not willing to give up anything to make the world better off... I hope this will change and we will one day follow Germany as a great example of sustainability.