NEPTUNE - 9. - 17.11.2007

On November the 9th 2007 the Neptune Circle IV met in Oldenburg. Students from five different universities Mikkeli Polytechnic (Finland), Noordelijke Hogeschool Leeuwarden (the Netherlands), Vitus Bering College (Horsens, Denmark), Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal) and the FH-OOW (Emden/Oldenburg, Germany) gathered together. This year the major task was to find the most suitable way for renaturating the old airfield “Alexanderheide” in Oldenburg. Special attention was given to the rainwater management, since two adjacent brooks bared the risk of flooding the urban surroundings.



During our first night we met in a restaurant and introduced each other. The evening ended with all of us going into town to enjoy some music and to dance. The following weekend was dedicated to team building activities. Mime, “blind trust” and riddle solving brought us closer to each other. From the beginning, there did not seem to be any language problem at all. Of course there were some misunderstandings, but these could all be solved within seconds.














The “real” work commenced on Monday November the 12th. We visited Alexanderheide, got to know the flow of the brooks, looked at old military buildings and got quite a good impression of what we had to cope with. We were also given lectures by the “Haaren-Wasseracht”, by a representative of the municipality of Oldenburg and by the head of the “Project Group Water” of the Agenda 21. All of them were concerned about different parts of the planning. The municipality of the city, represented by Mr. Fuchs provided us with the master plan of what the area should look like after the renaturation process and restricted actions to leisure and natural habitats. Mr. Lueken from the “Haaren-Wasseracht” was very concerned of how to cope with the increasing amount of water especially in the South-East of the area, where the risk of flooding became imminent with every little rainfall. He helped us a lot during the week to develop suitable profiles for the brooks and calmly answered every question we came up with. During the visit of Alexanderheide Mr. Brüning gave us an inside of what the “Project Group Water” has in mind for the development process. He gave expert information about the nature and why a development should take place ecologically.






During the week six teams made up of students from five different countries collected ideas and developed plans of how to implement these. On Friday November the 16th a jury assembled and judged our presentations on the basis of the water management plans, proposed heating systems, possible costs, creativity and feasibility of the ideas and of course the presentations themselves. Following the presentations, I was astonished by the variety of ideas. The “A-Team” wanted to transform Alexanderheide into a second Versailles; “Team Tower” opted for a huge lake in a natural surrounding overcoming the height differences with a pump driven by a wind mill; “Terra Fox” compared human development with the spreading of cancer and tried to provide some more space for this, including sport and leisure activities into the plan; “Team Water World” saw the possibility of a small wind park and forests in the area; and “Beiji” even came up with the idea of creating a motocross/paintball/quad driving field.




At the end two winners were announced by the jury. The ideas of the “A-Team” and “Terra Fox” caught the jury’s interest the most. But looking at the whole week and what we had learned, all teams were winners.













The Neptune Project was a wonderful opportunity to get to know other students from different countries and different academic backgrounds. Team skills were developed by combining diverse ideas and knowledge into one big plan. During the project everybody made a lot of friends. Concluding, I can only recommend to all students to take part in an international project at least once in their studies. These wonderful experiences strengthen your self-esteem and will certainly help to look at problems from different perspectives.

Thanks a lot for giving us the opportunity to take part.