Starting in Stuttgart
Upon arriving in Germany, I had many preconceptions and feelings about the adventure I was about to have. I was nervous, excited, and curious as this would be my first time in a foreign country, let alone the longest flight I had ever been on. Starting in Stuttgart, our class was immediately faced with so many of the themes of our class: during our site visits but also in the everyday life of our stay. We took public transit often, walked to our destinations, used a ReCup, and tried using the pfand system! The city center of Stuttgart reminded me of Downtown Los Angeles or the Santa Monic third street promenade — full of shops, a mix of tourists and locals, and American culture was ever present. Overall, this leg of our trip for me was more about getting acclimated to being in a foreign country and some self discovery and reflection upon my life in the US compared to life here in Germany. I feel like as a society we are always looking for a “better way” to do life, city planning and socially/culturally. And because this class is about Germany, I thought I would be blown away with how people lived here, but I realized we all just live differently and the reason why it’s hard to change the way we live is because we live in systems and structures that are informed by history and embedded into our cultures. A couple of the specific highlights of our schedule in Stuttgart included a visit to the Impact Hub and our day trip to Tübingen.
The Impact Hub is a coworking space that individuals and start up companies that need workspace can pay memberships to for the office space. There is a cafe, offices, calling booths, and meeting rooms that are accessible to members. At first, I didn’t think much of this space because it reminded me of WeWork and the concept wasn’t totally new, but as we learned more about this specific Impact Hub in Stuttgart and about companies that rent space there such as the Solar Bakery, I was sold on the idea while leaving. It is more than just a physical space and tool for people to create their work product, the part that sold me on the concept was the networking and community aspect. I enjoyed talking to the employees and co-owner at the Solar Bakery company because I got an insight of corporate/start up life in Germany. Additionally, we got insights about the type of people that operate out of a coworking space and what their values are. While this company had an amazing idea for environmental sustainability, I found myself thinking about the social sustainability of a coworking space. At the Impact Hub, I could see human capital in the works which is what I love about human beings — being able to come together and create an output of ideas from the planning to execution stage.
In Tübingen, we talked to an urban planner and did a city tour of the area and French Quarter. I was interested in how this city operated with the planning of their city and their renewable energy commitment. Tübingen was where I was first exposed to the concept of the ReCup, we received a plastic cup at a cafe at a small price and are able to return it to pretty much every cafe around Germany. I thought this was crazy because Oxy can’t even run the ecoclamshell program effectively for the Marketplace. I worked at campus dining in marketing for sustainability and wished I had known about this as a potential model to recreate.
On our walking tour of the French Quarter, we learned about truly “utopian” living that was reminiscent of the documentary we watched in the second week of class. Similar to the ReCup, the concept of German trust and the overlap between environmental and social sustainability was ever present. I wondered if I could live like those in the French quarter. I love the idea of the community but I think there are a lot of American ideals embedded in me. I have the ambition to have a house and my own space like that. I love having a car and this type of living reminded me of a college dorm. I didn’t even realize how much this was cemented into me and my dreams until I was confronted with the idea of the French Quarter! It was nice to think deeply about my own desires for how I want to live, not just society on the macro level. Is environmental sustainability my trade off? Have I already fully bought into American life and culture, which has been sold to me since I could play with toys and watch commercials?
As I write this blog post in Freiburg, I am excited for what is to come for week 2. What questions will I be asking of myself from the information I am intaking and the environment I am absorbing. Funnily enough, we are supposed to be reflecting on German ways of sustainability and policies, but I can’t help reflecting on my own life, values, and ideas of the way I choose to live.
