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 delicious beakfast after that we met our guides Insa and Marlene who took us for a city tour where we learned very interesting things about Luneburg. After tour we went to Leuphana University campus where we had lunch in mensa. After lunch we had a presentation led by Maik Adomssent on Basic concepts of sustainable development after which two students introduced us the OIKOS initiative and showed us their acitivies at the university field and did a workshop with us. We came back to our hotel and had great dinner.

Day 3

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

Day 4

We visited Alfred Toepfer Academy for Nature Conservation in small city of Schneverdingen where we learned something about cominucating with 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 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 also require very specific measures to strengthen the life processes in soil and foodstuffs. Than we visited 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 day in the University where we listened to member of German Green Party from Luneburg council. We found out, that allocation of seats for Green Party in Luneburg is 28,7% and for the rest of Germany it is from 10 to 13%. We also discussed history of Green Party. After that we met representatives of NGO DialogS who told us something about education and participation of community in creating sustainable life in Luneburg. In the second part of the day we visited Hamburg again. We saw International Building Exhibition IBA where we visited new Green Houses allocated on the island on Elbe. The final stop was Energy Bunker which has been converted into energy storage and which also generates energy itself.

Day 6

Day started with a lecture about Innovation Incubator by Marcus Falke after which we saw a presentations of projects of PhD students and than discussed each one of them during world cafe. Than we loaded to bus and after a very long drive got off back in Prague.

Summary

First of all I would love to thank Dana and Andrew for a 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 have still many things to learn! I think i can't actually highlight only one thing from the whole trip. I really loved the Landfill excursion becouse I didn't know there are so many ways to use it. Also Tilmann Wolfsteller was very lovely guy who had an answer to every question we asked. Than there was a great trip to organic farm until which I didn't even know that something like Demeter agriculture even exist. 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 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 surpised 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 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.