Summer with the BUND in Germany

I've been in Germany for over a month now, and I want to start off by saying that I absolutely love it here. The people are great, the work is fun and challenging, my German is getting better, and I am learning a lot. I get to spend a lot of time outside but have challenging and rewarding office tasks, so it’s the best of both worlds.

According to Wikipedia, "A biotope is an area of uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific assemblage of plants and animals." Before coming here, I had never heard the word “biotope” before, but now it is one of the most important words in the vocabulary that describes my life. Every morning the three other volunteers and I head out with a wise old man named Eberhard, affectionately known as Ebi. Often, a couple other older people join us, including a somewhat belligerent older man who used to be a teacher, a strange but kind older woman, and a calm and patient older man. Every morning at 8:00 we gather in front of the machine storage room, gather our tools for the day, and head out to the biotopes.

I’m working with the BUND Westlicher Hegau, which is responsible for the management of many small biotopes in the region surrounding our center. Germany has been densely populated by humans for many, many years, and the environment reflects that. For over a thousand years, people have been mowing the meadows in this region twice a year, once in late June and a second time in September. Originally this was done because people needed hay for their livestock, but over time, the flora and fauna of these meadows has adapted to the process, and now depend on it for their survival. In fact, many plant and insect species are very rare or regionally extinct because the practice of mowing the meadows twice a year was discontinued. Meadows that are correctly taken care of are incredibly biodiverse, with hundreds of different plant and insect species squeezed into a few square meters.

Plants and animals from the meadows.

From our end, this maintenance entails mowing down the grass and flowers with weedwhackers or a sickle bar mower (a lawnmower with a meter long set of teeth in front). We then either make hay out of the grass by drying it on the field, or, if its wet, we throw it into a nearby forest using rakes and pitchforks. Using the weedwhacker was very difficult at first, not because it was physically or technically hard (although I struggle with that too), but because I felt bad when I killed happy, healthy-looking plants, leaving behind bare surfaces and piles of greenery. Humans are good at killing things; when nature adapts, killing gives life.

As humans have transitioned from a pastoral system to an intensive agricultural society, so too have the dynamics around the maintenance of these meadows. The reasons have changed, the people have changed, the tools have changed (some), but at its core, the process has not. The meadows used to be mowed for hay for livestock, now they are mowed to preserve biodiversity; the mowers used to be farmers, now they’re environmentalists (although some farmers mow too); people used to use scythes, now they use weedwhackers; but still the meadows bloom twice a year, and still the meadows are mowed twice a year.

More finds from the meadows.

California Native people had a very similar land management strategy where they would burn select meadows after harvesting the seeds or roots from the plants there. Burning and mowing both act as a sort of palate cleanser, removing certain plants that have not seeded yet and removing nutrients or returning them back to the soil. One difference between people in Germany and California was that Germans had large mammals like cows and horses that needed hay for food and bedding in the winter. I have developed the hypothesis that, if Californians had had large mammals, they would have mowed their fields and made hay too instead of burning.

Another significant part of our work outside includes invasive species removal. During my internships in Santa Barbara, I also helped remove many invasive species, a great number of which came from Europe. Those same species are the native ones we are protecting here by removing other invasive species which come from – you guessed it – America. I find it very ironic that I come to another continent to kill plants that came from that same continent.

During my volunteer experiences in Brazil and Peru the volunteers were expected to help with certain tasks but were never afforded a huge amount of responsibility for the organization itself. Here, interns make up half of the team and are basically expected to run the organization. We work in the office in the afternoons answering emails and phone calls, planning the kid group and summer camp, and running the online shop that the BUND Westlicher Hegau runs (https://shop.all-about-bats.net/). We sell all sorts of bat-related things, from books to bat detectors to bat houses to plush bats. When people place an order we print it out, package it, and send it off. The responsibility is sometimes fun, sometimes stressful, and always a learning experience. Additionally, everything is in German, which is an extra challenge since I have never had to use German in a professional way. There are a lot of organizational and financial terms that I need clarification on, but everyone here is more than willing to explain what I don’t understand. I also avoid answering the phone for two reasons: firstly, someone on the phone might be less understanding when I don’t know the word for a specific type of financial transaction (for example), and secondly, I am in a region in Germany where many people speak with a strong dialect that I can’t always understand. However, I am proud to say my comprehension and ability to express myself has gotten significantly better in the last month.

I live in an apartment here with the other interns that is about a minute walk away from the office I work out of. It’s fun to live with the people I work with, and I have gotten to know the three other people here very well in the last month. I get along well with all of them, and they all bring their own flavor to the group. Anja is 22, studies forestry, and is very kind and understanding. Fabian is 21 and is working here as a year of service (Bundesfreiwilligendienst) between gymnasium (German high school equivalent) and university. He is always ready for a deep conversation, can name almost any flowering plant here, and is a bit weird but in a good way. Steffi is 18 and also doing a year of service between gymnasium and university. She is a lot of fun while at the same time being mean in an inoffensive way; I think of her as a lovable devil. We have started the tradition of "Sushi Sundays", where every Sunday we make sushi for dinner together (bottom two pictures below).

We find many mushrooms during our work outside, which fascinate me no end these days. The edible ones (parasol, puffballs) we take home and cook. They make a very nice addition to sushi.

My aunt and cousin came to visit from Kassel one weekend and we went to the Rheinfall (Europe's biggest waterfall), Stein am Rhein (a cute city along the river), and the Hohentwiel (an old castle on a hill nearby that reminded me a lot of Macchu Picchu). I love the fact that I have family here who I can visit and who comes to visit me; I'm not from Germany but I have roots here.

Other fun pictures from my time here (slideshow). 1: bats in the roof of the school here, 2: our names on the door of our apartment, 3: a very strange fountain in Wangen, 4: nice German landscape, 5: playing frisbee in the Bodensee, 6: view of the Bodensee.