On November 10th last year, the Q1 Bilingual Geography course took the opportunity to visit the Geological Institute in Cologne at its Open Day. The day started with a short introduction by Mrs. Wiktorin, and then we listened to three presentations.

The first one was about climate migrants who migrate because of changing climatic conditions. The population can no longer progress subsistence agriculture due to rising sea levels or changing agricultural parameters in its region of the country or continent. Because of this they “migrate” to a place with more suitable climatic conditions for their subsistence agriculture.
In the second presentation with the title “Man’s cattle, women’s goats” we learned about traditional role models in African economy. Basically, men are responsible for animal care and breeding and women’s duties include family and household business. Because many men are absent for different reasons, women want to step in, but the traditional role model forbids them to breed cows or pigs. To help these women, they came up with a solution: goats. Because the traditional “law” does not say anything about goats, women can breed them without any objections by men. Additionally goats can easily adapt to the often very dry climate.
In our last presentation, we learned how to be more environmentally conscious by sharing goods like transport, food and clothes with other people. This explanation might simplify it: Let’s say you have a car, but you only use it once or twice a week and you neighbour needs a car but can’t afford a parking lot. If you now share your car with your neighbours, you have “shared the economy”.
In the final event of the day, we learned what a hydro geographer does. For that we took a short walk to the Aachener Weiher and discovered how many parameters need to be in just the right order to allow flora and fauna a place to live. Sadly, this was cancelled due to weather influx.

von Alexander W.