Day 3: Freiburg Market & Sustainability Tour - Farms/ Wind Turbines

Today started off a little rainy, but we were fortunate to get a beautiful afternoon in the Black Forest.

We began exploring the morning market that is held around the large church tower we climbed yesterday.

We continued by visiting Castle Hochburg, two farms to see various energy sustainability items in actual use, and a couple wind turbines up close and from the inside.  Finally, we enjoyed a meal of all items produced at a third farm. 

We were on the outing for 7.5 hours.  Between the outing and morning market exploring, we logged 7 miles of walking.

Update:  Photos available here.

Day 2: Freiburg Hike

Off to an excellent start!  Hiked up the church tower, up the hill...they should sleep well this evening.

Approaching 7 miles of walking today.

Day 2: Arrival in Frankfurt, Germany

We all have arrived safely in Frankfurt and are together traveling by train to Freiburg.

Update:  Some selected photos now online here.

Day 1: Travel to Frankfurt, Germany

Six students traveled with us from Columbia, five more traveled with us from Charlotte to Frankfurt.  All went as planned.  We looked forward to meeting the final three to complete our group of 18 students and 2 leaders.

2016 Pre-Departure Blog Entry

We are looking forward to an exciting and educational trip this year!  Thank you for sending your kids with us to have this adventure.

For all the parents / guardians that are following our blog and may require our phone numbers in an emergency, please note them below:

Dr. Ed Gatzke:  803-567-9540

Dr. Andi Gatzke:  803-220-6572

Day 13 - 5/23/2015, Deutsches Museum and Hofbrauhaus

Today we went to the Deutsches Museum, the German Technical Museum.  This is a gigantic museum in Munich that covers almost all of technology.  Ceramics, mining, energy, transportation, physics, printing, paper, textiles, metallurgy, everything.  The Germans say you should spend days here.  We spent about 3.5 hours here, with a quick tour of the energy section then a scavenger hunt through the windmills, steam engines, electric, mining, and transportation sections.  

We met for our final dinner together at the Hoffbrauhaus.  This is a traditional place for dinners in Munich.  This time, it was a nice mix of tourists and locals celebrating their soccer championship for FC Bayern.  Everyone had a good time and we made it back to the hotel to get ready to fly home on Sunday. 

This was a terrific well-behaved group that hopefully had a great time in Germany.  We will miss them.

 

Day 12 - 5/22/2015, Therme Erding

Today we tried a new activity for our Maymester class.  We took them all out to visit a geothermal energy plant in Erding.  Erding is a small town to the north east of Munich on the end of a rail line.  They are more famous for Erdinger beer.  The geothermal well was drilled in the 80's by Texaco looking for oil.  They found hot water so they started using it for regional heating.  In 1999, a small spa was built on the site.  The spa expanded and expanded.  They now are one of the biggest spas in the world and they claim to be the biggest water park in Europe.  They get water at 67 C all year long, about the equivalent of a continuous 5 WM generator.

We got there a bit after 10 but the water slides did not open until 2:00.  The students were given a four hour pass, so we entered at 11 so that we could go down the slides before returning to Munich.  Everyone had a good time sampling the mineral baths, steam rooms, hot tubs, and pools.

After the trip to Erding, some of us went on a tour of the Allianz Stadium, home of FC Bayern and Munich 1860.  Tomorrow is the highlight of the trip, the Deutsches Museum.