Spring 2013 in Freiburg, Germany

 

In February 2013, I moved to Germany to participate in IES Abroad's Environmental Studies and Sustainability program in Freiburg, Germany's "Solar Energy Capital" and one of the "greenest" cities in Europe. Nestled into Germany's famed Black Forest, Freiburg is a medieval city that is making all of the right steps towards sustainability. I took public transportation everywhere, and lived in Vauban, a super eco-friendly pedestrian neighborhood that  prohibits cars from driving through it. My coursework engaged me in the local community, and I visited municipal services and industries to get an inside look on how Freiburg's public transportation network functioned, how Germany's recycling system works, and learned all about the presence of solar energy throughout Freiburg. I also did lots of fieldwork,  learning the ecology and  human-environmental history of the Black Forest, the Rhine River, and Swiss Alps, with trips to each of those places. I also increased my German language fluency through a language courses at the local university with students from all over the world. 

 

I also enrolled in some courses at Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg through their Forestry and Environmental Science graduate program, and took graduate-level forestry and ecology courses with German and international students. For my Population and Community Ecology class,  I conducted an entomology research project on flower-visiting insects in the Freiburg Botanical Garden. 

 

Living in such an inspiring place and interacting with people from across the globe filled me with hope that we can work towards a more sustainable future.

 

Check out the courses I took:

Change of Ecosystems as a Result of Long-Term Human Activities in Southwest Germany and the Swiss Alps,

Freiburg Green City: Economic Aspects of Environmental Change,

Ecosystem Management,

Population and Community Ecology.