Day Three
-Malavika
Half asleep, with sleepy heads and droopy eyes, we all
trudged out of bed at 4:00 a.m. and made our way to our meeting point at
Holsten Strasse, for a very early start to our Third Day here, at Hamburg.
Here, we were all hoarded onto a bus that would take us to the Pellworm Island,
a small island in the North Sea, home to the largest hybrid renewable energy
plants in Europe.
One thing in today’s programme, worth of mentioning is the
ferry ride. With a wide expanse of sea on all sides, and pleasant cold wind
blowing at our faces, the 30 minute ride was an amazing experience.
Pellworm is an old island which was once a part of the larger island of Strand which was torn into
pieces in a disastrous storm tide in 1634. Its area is 37 km², and its
population is roughly 1,200 with only one doctor, who substitutes out as a
general physician, a dentist, an orthopedic, and what not, and only one pastor,
who happens to be woman with three children of her own!
The main
occupation here is agriculture and the farmers, who happened to have ideas of a
self sustaining life at their island, began producing their own energy 30 years
ago. Today, Pellworm has its own solar photo-voltaic energy plant, a wind
energy plant, and also a biogas plant, all on quite a big scale!
We also met
Dieter Haack and Sven Maier of E.ON companies, who explained to us, the working
of the different plants.
We then went to
the small harbour town of Husum, where we were left free to go around, shop, or
get ourselves an ice-cream or two.
At five o’ clock,
they decided to call it a day, and we all dispersed, individually, or in groups,
to spend the later part of the evening as we pleased, also waiting in
anticipation for the next day which promised us a meeting with the Mayor of Hamburg
and the Minister of Trade from India.
So, join us in
our wait, and let’s see what tomorrow has in store for us..
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