Observations of Germany's Agriculture and Environmental Conservation

 Hallo und Willkommen zu mein Blog!  (Hello and welcome to my blog!)

In the summer after my sophomore year of high school, I had the opportunity of partaking in an exchange trip to Germany.  I stayed with a girl and her family for 3 weeks and she traveled later that fall and stayed with me and my family for three weeks.  The group of students I went with from my high school were also in Germany for an additional week and stayed at an Air bnb in Füssen, Germany. 

Over all of the four weeks that I was in Germany, I was amazed and fascinated by the nature and agriculture that was apparent everywhere.  Many of the towns were very condensed compared to American and houses were built close to, if not on top of other houses.  In this way, many of the towns we visited were surrounded closely by lush forest.  Hiking trails and paths were readily available to everyone in the towns and cities.  Even slightly larger cities such as Heidelberg seemed to overflow with nature.  And if nature wasn’t close by outside the city, it was everywhere inside the city.  Street corners blossomed with wildflowers and bushes and grasses grew in between and next to buildings.

Where my exchange sister lived in Eberbach, there was a pasture down the mountain where cattle grazed.  According to my exchange sister, the farmer came and cared for them occasionally and the cattle were left out to graze occasionally.  There were also goats in a smaller pasture closer to our house.  These pastures were right next to a large expanse of evergreen forest with hiking trails where I regularly went on runs and walks with their dog.  Likewise, in Füssen, just after hiking in the Alps, we were fortunate enough to encounter a herd of cattle on grazing lands several times.  It was beautiful to see cattle grazing outdoors in a controlled environment where nature thrived all around.  Each bovine had a bell around their necks in case they got separated from the herd.

Visiting Germany was a truly amazing experience and I would love to return someday to study the agriculture and conservation of the country more.