I want to get clean… How Forest Bathing clears your Mind


Due to Corona, we aren’t able to visit our lovely university and complain about the whole bunch of work the professors gave us. Instead, this work awaits us at our desk at home now; practically every aspect of our studies is carried out there. It feels like tasks and information are overrunning us and time is, naturally, limited. That’s why it’s important to let off some steam and find calmness amidst all this chaos. Netflix doesn’t have to be the best solution, though. Ever thought about forests? Yeah sure, those wide, green spaces are nice for a short walk. But what about plunging into the forest and really focusing? So, why don’t we plunge into the benefits of Forest Bathing and how it helps us maintain our mental health.

What is Forest Bathing?
Forest Bathing is not at all new. It originated in Japan and is called Shinrin-Yoku. Basically, it means to experience the forest with all your senses and create a connection between you and the natural world around you. Smell the flowers, listen to the softly flowing water or just relax while watching the sunlight sprinkle through the leaves. If you want to hug a tree, feel free to do it! Sounds hippie-like? Maybe it is. But the results are amazing.


Get the facts
Various studies have proven the positive impacts of Forest Bathing. First of all, it slows you down. It reduces the stress which has gathered over the days and lets you focus in the here and now. I don’t think I have to tell you how stressful life can be and how stress negatively affects your health and well-being. It can even cause depression. Forest Bathing helps you stay mentally healthy. What’s more, your immune system benefits from it. A study by the Department of Hygiene and Public Health of the Nippon Medical School in Japan proves that a forest bathing trip can increase the activity of the NK-Cells (Natural Killer Cells), which are for example responsible for exterminating cancer cells. Without digging to deep into biology: your immune system gets a nice boost. Of course, one condition does exist: no mobile phone! Any technical device will only distract and, after all, the main goal is to focus and shortly distance oneself from the daily, rushing world. Additionally, the intention of the forest bather must be genuine. If they only think it’s humbug anyway, no gain can be achieved.

The point is: Our world isn’t becoming slower. Quite the contrary, with all the tasks awaiting us, it’s becoming faster, more exciting and more complicated. It doesn’t matter if you’re just strolling through a park or wander off the beaten path through the wood: Concentrating on your fantastic, natural environment for a while takes you through this rather unsure time a lot easier. So – why not pay the Siebentischwald a visit and try it out?

author: Sara Vidanovic

A look behind the curtain – The student union at the University of Augsburg

Student unions are as old as universities themselves. Even during a worldwide pandemic they are not keeping quiet. I had the honor to talk to Karolin Daiber, a member of the student union “Fachschaft Lehramt”, about planning parties, raising your voice and what’s so special about 6pm on a Friday night.

1. Why did you decide to become a part of the student union?

Even back in school I always liked to be part of a school group to help other students and to plan some events – just being part of a group where you have a team spirit. When I started to go to college, I wanted to do something similar, so I decided to become a part of the student union and I’ve really liked it so far.

2. What are your main tasks?

That’s actually quite difficult to answer because we actually don’t have main tasks for everyone. It’s more like, if you’re interested in joining some activities or want to help plan some events you can just join these smaller groups. That’s actually something I really like because you can do a lot of different things.

3. What are your favorite small group activities?

I really enjoy planning our regular semester opening party called “Lehramtsparty”, and also the orientation days for the freshmen because you have to work in a team and your plan has to be really good in order for it to work. You put a lot of effort in but you get a lot of fun back and also a lot of happy students.

4. Are you rather a pragmatic or an idealistic person when it comes to solving problems?

I’m definitely a pragmatic person, unlike some other people. That’s another thing I really like about the student union, though: you get to know so many different and interesting people. All of them have their own way of thinking and solving problems. You have to learn to be patient. I think that’s always a good thing to learn for life.

5. What is an event that will most likely always remain in your memory?

Definitely the semester opening party we host. It’s such a great experience. It’s so cool to come back from your semester holidays, back from working and doing all kinds of things to then see all of your friends again. You can all party together and everyone is excited. On the other hand, I will definitely remember the orientation days for the freshmen, that we offer before the winter semester. We go to a little house in a village close to Augsburg and try to help them get into all the college stuff you have to know, like how to create your timetable and where to go for specific questions. And to get to know each other, of course. We stay there for five days and have two different groups and afterwards, we are basically wrecked… But it’s always so much fun and the freshmen are always very grateful that they get some help, too. It’s really worth it.

6. Would you consider the student union that you are part of political?

I would definitely say so. I think we are political because we are role models, kind of. When we post something on social media, a lot of people will see it so we always check beforehand if it fits our political views or not. And sometimes we have a big discussion because we have different opinions. Also, when students come to us with their problems and we try to help them there’s always some interaction with our president and professors. We always have to think about how we’ll approach them, and we have to consider who to talk to first. In that sense, we’re definitely political.

7. Has the group ever voted for a decision that you couldn’t really support?

I don’t think that has happened so far, because I’m pretty sure it would have bothered me otherwise. It’s really an important question to keep in mind. You should always stand up if you feel like something’s not right. I think as long as there is the possibility to talk and discuss things in the group, it’s fine. It’s always good for yourself to get different views from other people to learn something and think again about your own opinion.

8. Last but not least, tell us a funny inside story on what goes on behind the scenes of our university.

I really had to think about this for a while. I feel like what’s maybe interesting is the following: We have our weekly meetings on Friday afternoon and often, we order some pizza or pasta afterwards and we always have to wait until 6pm because that’s when the happy hour starts in the Unikum. The meetings are always a lot of work because you have all kinds of things to do and it can be chaotic with that many people. After that you feel really good, though, because you have the weekend ahead of you and you’re waiting for pizza with some really cool people. I’m pretty sure we support the Unikum quite a bit with our money.

author: Tabea Becker

Greta, where art thou? The ongoing importance of climate action

When watching the news these days, it seems to be all about the newly spreading Covid-19 virus. While approximately a year ago, it was all about Greta Thunberg and her Fridays for Future, now the daily input we get just revolves around the newly taken measures or the increasing numbers of newly infected people. Even though the ongoing lockdown has had some positive side effects on our nature – like the improvement of global air quality due to the reduction of travel on the ground, just as in the air – protecting the climate remains very important and should not be neglected.

What happened to Greta

In view of the present situation, climate protection and Greta Thunberg seem to be rather overshadowed by the health crisis. And as if that weren’t enough, Fridays for Future demonstrations won’t be possible any time soon, considering the restraining orders in many countries. That means no more young people skipping school all over the world to strike against the lack of climate protection measures. But while our day-to-day lives have been involuntarily slowed down a bit, the world hasn’t stopped turning, and catastrophes still occur all around our environment. There are still fish, turtles, birds and other creatures that die every day in consequence of sea and air pollution. Australia is still struggling with the high (financial and environmental) cost of combating forest fires. Biodiversity is in danger because of species extinction and so forth. The list of natural catastrophes seems endless. Greenpeace Executive Director Jennifer Morgan states that climate change is still taking place. One crisis does not stop another.

New Stimulus Programme

Early successes concerning the decrease of CO2 emissions are of course highly gratifying, however the downward trend won’t be of a lasting nature. Finally, economic slumps never replace climate protection strategies. Instead, these two factors – protecting the climate and protecting prosperity – should be connected. In the end, the measures we take to overcome this financial crisis will decide about the future of our planet and show to what extent we’ve learned something from Covid-19. Experts from the environmental organisation Agora are currently working on a thesis paper that includes a climate and economic stimulus programme. This programme should boost the economy and simultaneously reduce emissions on a sustained basis: the reduction of electricity prices and financial support for the purchase of climate-neutral systems in the steel industry. The investment in climate-friendly technologies would be a chance, but success is not yet guaranteed. Even though environmental pollution is still going on, this crisis might be a chance to open the everyone’s eyes. We need to realize how positive everything could turn out, if we just were be a bit more careful. Maybe the returning dolphins, the crystal clear water in Venice’s harbours, the refreshing air or the deep blue sky will make us once more aware how beautiful our nature is and why it is so important to protect it.

author: Laura Henkes

Your local library – the Berghain next door

The closing of libraries in small towns and plenty of free digital copies of books that can be accessed online suggest hard times for libraries. However, thanks to a new concept, libraries are well alive and flourishing in some bigger cities. This new concept attracts a higher number of people to libraries that don’t necessarily come there with the objectives to read, study, or work traditionally but to spend their time differently. When a pioneer library opens in the morning, some visitors are already waiting outside, which suggests difficulties in finding seating space for everybody else coming to the library throughout the day, turning a simple library visit into a Berghain experience. Depending on the time, of the day one can’t even be sure of granted entrance anymore.

Libraries – the New Place to Be

As stated above, the traditional purpose of libraries has already shifted in some places. There are still visitors who just wish to read, research, or work in silence. Some visitors, however, are coming there with their luggage, waiting for their next departing train or flight, others are there to meet acquaintances near the seating area, and some are there to have a place to go after school or work. The libraries’ staff do not always dread these changes. Instead, they welcome the guests with open arms, even if that guest isn’t coming there for the books or favorable working environment. Some even go so far as to introduce changes to meet the people’s needs, such as reducing the number of physical books in their libraries to make space for more seating areas.

Library Situation in Augsburg

The question arises if these changes to the traditional concept of libraries in some places will affect the future situation in Augsburg with its public library, as well as the library on campus.  It is not clear if there is the option to create additional seating areas to offer space for the growing number of visitors the new trend attracts. It’s also unclear if the staff in charge are willing to introduce the respective changes to follow a new approach, as well as if the people would appreciate a more progressive concept concerning the city’s libraries. Let alone if the library on campus became more of a place to be than to research, work, or study, that would consequently make it harder for the university’s students and staff to work effectively in the library.

So while it has shown that a new concept introduced at the right place at the right time can positively affect the present situation, it should not be forgotten that everything comes with the respective pros and cons. It may therefore be possible for bigger cities to attract more people to libraries with this approach; however, this doesn’t guarantee for this concept to work out in every context or for every situation, as for example the one on campus.

author: Teresa Schneider

Fifty Shades of Greens

Fighting Food Waste

Walking through a supermarket, you may notice the many shelves stocked with freshly baked bread, exotic fruits and barely one-day-old vegetables. Everything is organic – everything is green – everything is sustainable, at least that’s what the ads promise. What´s hidden from the customers’ eyes are the completely overstuffed bins, containing huge amounts of still edible food. Since we were children, we’ve been told that wasting food is wrong. So how is it possible that food waste is still an issue today?

Here’s the problem

Even today, 800 million people – one in nine – are starving or suffering from malnutrition. Each of them could be fed with less than a quarter of the food that’s wasted in the western world each year. Globally, it takes a space larger than China just to produce the amount of food that is never eaten. And full tables come at a high price: over the last few decades, our food supply system has been globalized, which has driven up the prices of food in developing countries. A quarter of all fresh water consumption is used to grow our food. No to mention issues like deforestation, the extinction of rare species and the forced movement of indigenous people. It’s quite easy to think of food waste as someone else’s problem, but truth be told, more than half of the food waste takes place in our private homes.

What’ s happening in our neighborhood?

Germans approximately throw away 45 million tons of food per year, around 55kg per person. The government has discussed various strategies to cut this down. The goal is to reduce this huge number by 50 % over the next ten years. National awareness campaigns are launched to highlight the level of food waste, as well as setting legal guidelines for supermarkets and restaurants, which are responsible for around 40 million tons in total. Consumers are supposed to be aware of the real importance of the best-before-date, which is misinterpreted by some as a tutorial on how to stay alive. One of the most important parts of the plan is directed at the food industry and regards packaging the food in much smaller, suitable quantities. In addition, experts recommend a traffic-light-style system, which could illustrate precisely whether food is still edible.

What could be done about it?

And then, there are legal issues: at the moment, possible food-providers have to be afraid of legal proceedings, in case their donations cause food poisoning or other diseases. There is also the problem of transportation. Supermarkets have to pay someone to transport their food to organizations like the Tafel, that ensure that surplus food from retail trade is collected and passed on to those in need. While Germany hasn’t worked out all the legal details yet, others have already taken action. France, for example, has banned supermarket waste, unsold food is to be donated to food banks or charities. In Denmark, supermarkets have to release information on how much of their produce goes to waste. Over 150 food companies in the UK have committed to the Food Waste Reduction Roadmap, implementing the Target – Measure – Act strategy, which provides businesses with steps they can take to reduce waste in their own supply chain. Germany still has a lot to do.

author: Dietmar Zombori

Border controls – a love/hate relationship

Border controls – we all know them. We all hate them when we get stuck in depressingly long traffic jams near the Germany’s southern border with Austria on our way back from Italy, Croatia, etc. When you finally reach the point where the police officer comes up to you and wants to see your passport all your patience is gone, and you just want to get home. One might wonder what good these border controls are. One might argue that they shouldn’t be taking place because Austria is in the EU as well and furthermore is a part of the Schengen treaty, which was brought into life nearly solely for the purpose of eliminating borders. Now, there was a time not long ago where there indeed weren’t any controls among Germany’s borders, but we all know what changed this. The massive waves of refugees pouring into the country. The government decided to have the federal police controlling the most frequently used routes of illegal immigration by human traffickers.

Illegal immigration is not the only crime these border patrol units are trying to prevent. We all heard about the Mafia. What does the Mafia do? They kill, blackmail and trade with drugs. While the border patrols can’t really do much about the killing and blackmailing, they sure can do something about the drug-trade. A friend of mine which I’ll refer to as Tim works for the border patrol as an undercover investigator. Undercover meaning that he doesn’t wear a uniform and drives around in a normal car not that he went undercover to become the best friend of some drug kingpin and then snitch on him. Tim told me several stories about several cases concerning his and his colleagues’ work with drugs at the German-Austria border. The most spectacular being the one where they found multiple kilos of cocaine welded into a car. The total value was estimated to 500.000€. And this is not even the most amazing thing about this case: The mule was known to the German authorities and they even knew that he had planned a trip from Germany down south, with drugs on board. He started this roadtrip of his in Nordhrein-Westfalen carried on through Baden-Württemberg until he was finally stopped by a border patrol unit. Unknown to the vast majority is the fact that border patrol control traffic entering but also leaving the country in order to make sure no convicted criminals leave the country.

That is just one of many many cases in which the border controls executed by the police resulted in success and helped to make this country safer. Where there are expensive drugs like cocaine, violence isn’t far away. And violence leads to pain, pain that often innocent bystanders of drug wars have to endure. So next time when the police officer at a border control comes up to your car and asks you for your passport and what you have in the back think about all the good things that come out of border controls and think twice if your sacrifice of time really is that bad.

author: Sean Langer

“I moved here because of the Eiskanal” – “The what?”

Since I was a little kid, my step dad took me and my family on a holiday to Slovenia every summer. On these holidays, my passion for whitewater kayaking was born. Now, around 20 years later, I can still be found in a boat on a regular basis. And here’s the reason for why I moved to Augsburg last year: the Eiskanal. But what exactly is the Eiskanal? I’m often quite surprised when people living in Augsburg who don’t have a single clue of what this thing is.

So what is it?

Well, as you might have guessed by now, the Eiskanal is somehow related to whitewater sports. In fact, it’s an artificial whitewater river that was built for the Summer Olympics in 1972. Up until today, the Eiskanal is a very famous spot for kayakers coming from all parts of Germany and even for non-Germans. People use the water for canoe slalom, where you navigate your canoe through a course of hanging gates on river rapids really fast, but you can also just ignore the gates and try to master the rapids as expertly as possible, or you might even see stand-up paddlers (I guess you know what this is) trying to survive the rapids of the Eiskanal. And one more thing: the Eiskanal will even host the canoe slalom world championships in 2022.

Mastering the waves

In my case, I prefer being in a boat without manoeuvring it through the gates as you do it in canoe slalom. To be honest, these gates simply annoy me and I just try not to get hit by them. For me, the Eiskanal is simply a training course for being prepared to master the waves on natural rivers in countries such as Austria or Slovenia. The boats I use are made of plastic, in contrast to the slalom canoes, which consist of carbon. Being made of plastic instead of carbon obviously makes the boats considerably cheaper, and – highly important for the natural rivers – a lot more stable and resistant against getting punctured by rocks.

Being on natural rivers is not comparable at all to the artificial rivers, such as the Eiskanal. You have the breath-taking scenery around you, which makes this sport so outstanding. Also, you might feel like being on holiday, even when being on the river for only one day. So you can completely forget your worries from everyday life. Being surrounded by nature is also quite calming for the stress the sport often brings. Almost before every new rapid, you can get really nervous and have to discuss with your group how to best run the rapid so you won’t have to roll up again, or, in case that doesn’t work, even get out of the boat and swim. Seeing the beautiful nature around you at this moment can have such a positive effect and encourage you for paddling forward.

Promoting the Eiskanal

Highlighting the pro’s of natural rivers in contrast to the Eiskanal was definitely not meant to talk bad about the Eiskanal. Instead, kayaking on the Eiskanal is the best training and preparation for going on the natural whitewater rivers. You know that the rapids are always the same, you can practice on the same spot again and again, and nearly always, there is someone around who could help you in case of an emergency. If you struggle to get out of the water or to get your boat out again, there will be another person in the water who can help you, or if not, then there are always people by the water. One last note, if you don’t feel like trying to kayak now, then one first approach might be to just go to the Eiskanal and watch the others in their boats. The Eiskanal is surrounded by a nice terrace-like green field, which is used by people a lot, especially in summer, for just relaxing in the sun, having a picnic, or taking a break from a bike ride. And why not just let your eyes wander towards the kayakers mastering the waves on the Eiskanal?

author: Lena Pickert