Green Piece - issue 3

Issue 3 - Online VersionAugust 17th, 2011

Green Piece - Official Magazine of Lake Constance 2011 -

Editorial

2 Green Piece - Official Magazine of Lake Constance 2011

Lucky holder of this magazine,

‘’Pretty sure I felt some Zucchini in there’’. It seems that the media team and the officials as a whole managed to raise awareness about environment. Even if I have to admit it, this quote might be a bit out of context since it has been heard after the train of love before improvisation theatre. Nevertheless, it looks like the organisers’ aim is being reached as we get further in the session.

Currently, you are at the session’s heart and getting to the academic’s best. The official part of the ses-sion, being embodied by the end of Teambuilding and the beginning of Committee Work has begun and will continue until the end of this session. As well, World Café definitely contributed to the eye-ope-ning effect and you are now more than ready to produce high quality resolutions.On the same note, I would like to stress that not agreeing with your fellow delegates is not criminal, you only need to convey your thought in a respectful and understandable way. Actually, I believe that we should leave all those stereotypes aside and express what we really think about climate change. It is essential to have different opinions to start a proper debate, therefore I urge you to speak out what you think.

EYP lives through debates, but is this the only reason we travel all over Europe? Not quite, or not only. We indeed believe in the European project and in the promotion of European citizenship. But it is not the only reason we take part in EYP’s activities. I personally gained so much from EYP, discovered and developed skills I didn’t even know about, had incredible bus trip experiences and overall met people I can only speak in the highest tones from. This is what I believe EYP is also made of – the people. It keeps the organisation alive and dynamic by providing new initiative.

Now, be part of this fantastic opportunity offered to you and make the most out of the remaining days. Make sure to keep smiling and still treat the organisers with respect. As what regards your chairs, now that you got to know them, you should know which attitude to adopt. Don’t forget to hug your journalist.

Enjoy the moment. Alex Narayanin - Editor -

CONTENT This Magazine was brought to you by 2. Editorial

4. What about Nuclear Power ?

5. Make it Gret, make it Passionate !

8. Cheesburger dreams of Yesterday

9. Asking the Delegates

10. How to kill Mosquitoes

11. Random Delegates

14. Adventures of the Zucchini duck

16. Yes to Euro

17. Toy Story

20. Growing up in a Barrel

21. Teambuilding

22. Two Green Lanterns

3Issue 3


In the aftermath of the nuclear power catastrophe in Fukushima in Japan, it is not surprising that the public now doubts of the necessity of nuclear power. However, it is still many’s belief that nuclear power is the most efficient energy source. The discussions whether or not nuclear power is effi-cient because of its threat, have been going on for ages. The public’s opinion on nuclear power is much divided, making the topic very controver-sial. We decided to ask the delegates what they thought about nuclear power’s part in Europe’s energy future.

We wanted to know if the delegates thought that nuclear power should be part of a sustainable en-ergy future for Europe. Delegates from eleven dif-ferent countries took part in the poll. Out of those, 20 were of the opinion that nuclear power should be part of a sustainable energy future, 23 were not and 7 delegates didn’t know. The answers we got were not what we expected. To find the reason to their answers we analysed which countries the answers came from.

Because Germany is one of the countries that are taking a clear step away from nuclear ener-gy, we expected a definite “no” from the German delegates. The German coalition government an-nounced that their nuclear power plants would be

phased out by 2022 shortly after the Fukushima catastrophe. The German delegates seemed to agree with their government since no one of the 14 asked delegates answered yes to our question. However, six of the delegates were unsure. All Spanish delegates were of the belief that nu-clear energy should not form part of Europe’s energy future. The same went for Greece. An inte-resting remark is the geographical closeness of these countries.Delegates from Finland, Czech Republic, Turkey, Poland, Romania and Netherlands all thought that nuclear power should function as an energy source in the future. Many of these countries were affected by the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986, which makes it exceptionally fascinating. The only countries that had as many people in favour as against were Sweden and Georgia.

The delegates have very different opinions with almost as many in favour of nuclear power as against. Something truly unusual is that there are more countries in favour of nuclear power than against whilst there are more delegates in favour. That is due to some delegations being large and some smaller. If the delegates were the ones making the decision, nuclear power would not be part of a sustainable energy future for Europe.

What about Nuclear Power ?

By Noura Berrouba

5Issue 3

By Monica Mantovani

Make it Great, make it Passionate !

Committee Work is one of the most important parts of an EYP session and everyone should be involved in it.

Being involved in Committee Work is not easy, you can be shy or you can be afraid of different ideas, but that is not a problem. Essentially Committee Work is important because it challenges people on different levels and forces them to go beyond the well known. The aim of this is to find something you believe in and to make it real in your resolution. Are you an ambassador of your country ? Maybe. Are you an ambassador of yourself ? Yes. You should be an ambassador of yourself, do not try to be witty, but to come up with something that serves what you believe in.

You could argue because of the large number of different opinions, but eventually you will learn to understand how extraordinarily different we all are. The most important thing in order to find a common solution is to be able to say, “I do not

agree as I have a different opinion”, instead of “I do not agree because what you are saying is totally wrong”. That way, you can open your mind, some-times you can change opinions, but surely you will create a new perspective of the topic.You have to believe that your resolution can ac-tually make change. Just by being passionate you can come to agree on passionate things. We can agree and work together if we want to, but if we wouldn’t believe in it we probably would not be on the top of the biological hierarchy like we are today.

Do not pretend to be something you are not, do not agree with someone if you do not think so. You have to find a solution together and be passionate about the resolution you will write. If you are pas-sionate you will rediscover the power of imagina-tion and you will write something that can perfectly reflect your point of view. So, do not fall asleep, because now it’s time make a change together, before suffering from the consequences of it !

Are you an ambassador of yourself ? Yes.

““

Things Money can’t buy.

7Issue 3


Cheeseburger dreams of Yesterday By Saga Eriksson

She walks in the door and immediately asks me how her hair looks. I shouldn’t be surprised by her random questions after all of these years, but I am slightly taken aback. Nonetheless I quickly respond with an “it looks fine” to which she pro-ceeds to reply that she has stopped using sham-poo. At first I assume that she’s joking but soon realise that she is dead serious. Wait, what ?! This revelation causes my facial expression to switch from an almost laugh to a cordial nod and partly faked smile. I swear at that moment my life felt like a low-budget comedy show.

One of my best friends, Irina, who has since resu-med the use of shampoo, is a lot more advanced than me when it comes to living ecologically and being environmentally aware. But because I love her, and because she keeps constantly reminding me to, I try to be a better person. So I decided to try to eat only vegetarian food for a week; so-mething some of you are hopefully attempting du-ring this session. And I wish you all the luck with that endeavour.

At the start of my week I was given a list of what I was, and more importantly what I wasn’t, allowed to eat. I would tell you in detail how the week pro-gressed, my ups and downs, my feeling of ac-complishment once I was finally done and stuffing

my face with a burger. The truth, however, is that I don’t think you would care that much to hear the details, and in honesty’s name I wouldn’t re-member them. I spent the first few days craving cheeseburgers, the next in a meat-deprived haze.

Even though I make it sound rather dramatic, eating vegetarian food for a week was not that challenging. Most of the time the food even ends up tasting better than non-vegetarian food. Assu-ming of course that you are a better cook than me, which doesn’t take that much effort. At this session trying out part-time vegetarianism is even easier because you don’t have to prepare the food yourself. Even though one week was a piece of organic, eggless, soy chocolate cake, still eating vegetarian food for the rest of my life would be si-gnificantly more difficult. I’ve never been in a long-term relationship so I’m not quite sure I’d be ready for that commitment.

There are times when I feel guilty, when I look at that steak in front of me and I experience a flee-ting moment of guilt. Something the feeling isn’t even that fleeting but lasts for several hours or even days. That guilt unfortunately has not been enough to change my eating habits permanently. Maybe it will someday, God only knows it tries so hard.

9Issue 3

Asking the DelegatesBy Nicole Goetz

Now that the first few days of the session are already over and Committee Work is in full swing, it is time to have some delegates’ statements. I picked some delegates from different committees to interview them how Committee Work is running and what their thoughts about the World Café from Tuesday afternoon are.

Regarding Committee Work most delegates be-lieve that they made quite some progress discus-sing their topics for the first two days. After a suc-cessful Teambuilding they all have an enhanced team spirit and the goal of a triumphant resolu-tion. The committee on Development even had all their introductory clauses ready before the Coffee Break on Tuesday morning. Despite the tiredness they worked really well as a team and put much effort in staying focused and productive as Clara told me.Liv from the committee on Agriculture stated that every now and then there are minor disagree-ments, nevertheless they always found a compro-mise. The atmosphere is usually humorous with little jokes.In general all the committees seem to have achie-ved to become a real team within this short period and are resolution wise good in time.

The World Café from Tuesday afternoon was sup-posed to give the delegates new insights into their topics. Talking to the numerous experts provided them the perfect possibility to ask questions and get new information relevant to their resolution.Moira from AGRI for example liked the well-infor-med experts. Lara from DEVE also liked the length of the discussion rounds. She expressed that the half hour was enough time for everyone to get his or her questions answered and discussed that it was not too long for the delegates to get bored.Overall delegates were quite satisfied with their choices of discussion round topics. Some of the delegates I talked to told me that if they had known a bit more about the discussion topics they might have been able to choose more according to their committee topic. Regardless of the rele-vance to the committee topics observing the dele-gates who were all patiently listening and fiercely discussing with the experts on their topics.

In the view of many delegates the World Café is definitely a great opportunity to get more speci-fic information on their topic. The conversations and discussions with the experts may bring a new twist or idea for their work and add to the quality of the resolution.


After having spent a few days in Friedrichshafen, you may have noticed these little animals and insects living around the lake. Most of them are really useful and essential for the balance of the local ecosystem. However, some of them, like the millions of buzzing mosquitoes, are of pure nuisance to us session participants. During the journalist teambuilding for example, we had to move back inside because everyone started to feel really itchy and were wa-ving around with their arms, trying to chase away the unwanted guests. In order to prevent uncom-fortable situations like that, here are a few tech-niques to use which you can properly get rid of those little pains in the neck:

The sneaky one

This method is especially effective inside closed rooms or around other people. However, you have to be a bit patient at first. You wait until the flying mosquito has landed on a wall or on another per-son and then you crush it. Make sure to use a paper to do so. If not it is very advisable to wash your hand afterward !

The tricky one

This method may require a little practice and skill. Nevertheless, it is very quick and effective. Basi-cally the only thing you do is clapping your hands at the right place and time. As soon as you see the flying insect, you try to get it between your hands and crush it by clapping. Surprisingly, if you use an adequate amount of force, you won’t have any disgusting mess between your hands, but can gently brush the dead bug from your palm.

The fun one

This method only works when the mosquito already bit you and is still sucking. Since mosqui-toes don’t actually suck blood but merely bite an artery and let our own blood flow do the whole work. Now, as soon as you become aware of the pest, you don’t crush it right away but just lay a finger on it gently. This way it can’t get away anymore, its body, however, is still filling with your blood. Sooner or later the pressure inside it will get so high that it simply bursts.

How to kill Mosquitoes

By Nicole Goetz

11Issue 3

By Veronika Drzková

Random Delegates

* Manuel put some chilli into his lunch sandwich.* Roxana has a radio show. * Zuzana has a mosquito bite on her left elbow. * Nora hates Niall’s Homer Simpson socks. * Naomi is afraid of fish in the lake. * Jun felt nervous regarding the EYP thea-tre presentation. * Piotr likes pizza.* Alina loves doing sports. * Waltter likes wearing socks that don’t match. * Martin likes trains. * David plays water polo. * Felicia is quite chaotic.* Teona hates being on time. * Maria-Madalina is a law student. * Monika is checking everything twice; she’s a typical German. * Tamara has her crazy 5 minutes all day long. * Lara likes walking barefoot and she has almost never eaten insect. * Adam always sleeps on his belly. * Pontus’s favourite song to play on gui-tar is “Here comes the sun”. * Jannis is a bit freaky.* Anton hates dogs and has an identical brother and nephew. * Kasia loves the Irish accent. * Valentina’s favourite spot is Vama Veche in Romania. * Lukas used to play hockey for 7 years. * Lara has a sense of orientation. * Alex doesn’t like red wine. * Wojciech has earned money while shop-ping; he paid 20 Euros instead of 30.

* Julia doesn’t like cockroaches. * Klara is 1,82m tall.* Tuna is afraid of being tickled and she was one of the 8 people in the world having a unique disease. * Zeynep hates zucchini, anything made of zucchini and even the colour green. * Tom wants to be a rock star. * Levani has Bob Dylan at home - it’s his dog. * Cristian wants to become a lawyer or politician within the next years. * If Johny were a girl, his mother would have named him Aysc. * Theresa has no sense of orientation. * Zuzana forgot to follow her effort to eat only vegetarian food at this session; she has already eaten meat at least five times.* Urban is 1,97m tall. * Johannes likes sports. * Annmarie likes turtles.* Marilou is scared of elevators. * Sarah plays the flute. * Cem is a sportsman. * Konstantina loves travelling. * Elsa is a crazy Libra who laughs all the time.* Iowana is a bit nervous about being at her first EYP session ever. * Liv is really into dancing. * Olcay likes apples and teddy bears. * Mai knows 100 digits after the comma in number pi. * Robin is a member of the Swedish House of Knights. * Tamuna has a parrot, which says: “Ta-muna, I love you”. * Moira’s favourite word is ‘banana’.

In EYP, extreme randomness is a highly conta-gious disease. Creativity and quick reactions are very often required. To test these abilities, all the delegates in Friedrichshafen were asked to provide

the media team with a random fact about them-selves. Thanks to that, you may now compare your answers. And learn something new, maybe unexpected, about other participants. Enjoy!


International Cooperation 1

We had a fascinating discussion on the future of International Agreements to tackle climate change. Both experts agreed that, at present, progress towards an agreement was somewhat less than satisfactory. One expert says that the developed world must lead the way. The other one agrees but says that this is not enough. We need a framework wherein the developing world also de-creases its contribution to climate change but it is the developed world, which has already contributed so much, that must shoulder the burden in a new cli-mate change deal.

International Cooperation 2

One of the most valuable insights provided by Professor Helmut Graßl was that the cost of changing to more energy efficient technologies is lower than com-monly presumed. He says it all comes down to international co-operation and having discussions on a national level as well.

Sustainable Entrepreneurship

That the need for sustainable entrepreneurship is massive, became very clear when listening to Martin Viehöver and Gottfried Härle. Meeting the needs of the present and the future and always work long-term was two of the lessons learned.

World Café Impressions

13Issue 3

Effects of Climate Change

Physics and meteorology provided a strong academic background for both ex-perts. Concrete statistics including scary numbers and graphs were provided. Severe analyses of the climate change are frustrating. We’ve also been informed that 2% of Sahara could potentially energetically “feed” the whole worlds thanks to Desertec.

Capacity Building

Talking about topic 6 was a representative (Charlotte ...) from ECF, a founda-tion that gives money to youth organisations that fight against climate change. That also means that they support and encourage the European youth to get involved in the fight against climate change.

Travel Culture

Lack of infrastructures, organisation and money. Talking about the unification of the high-speed railways in Europe or about the new green solutions to travel, the problems remain the same, even if some associations are working hard to improve the situation.

Energy

We can’t live without it and we need a lot of fit. But how can we save the energy supply while thinking about our planet? Michael Loch and Dr. Stefan Ulreich presented some ideas how to solve the problem.


Last episode saw the Zucchini duck travelling high above the Earth in an airship with the far fa-med Baron von Zeppelin. It would take more than the nefarious sche-mes of climate change to stop this dynamic duo. No rising water le-vels, no melting ice caps, no freak storms, nothing climate change could throw their way would be able to stop them and their mighty airship.

Flying down from Lake Constance, they found themselves above the Iberian Peninsula. The Zucchini duck looked down at the beautiful cities of Barcelona, Porto and Ma-drid and saw all the people below. The beaches were packed and

the stadia filled with people wat-ching matadors fighting bulls. The Zucchini duck was fascinated and wanted to be part of all the fun and so, Baron von Zeppelin landed his airship and they both went down to play on the beach.The Zucchini duck and the old Ba-ron had great fun for a time, swim-ming in the beautiful waters of the coast of Gibraltar and playing vol-leyball on the beach. However, af-ter a time the Zucchini duck began to feel tired and thirsty. The Baron lifted him up onto his shoulder and off they went to get some water.Alas, they would give the poor Zucchini Duck no water. Due to climate change, not enough water had fallen for months and now the

Iberian Peninsula was suffering from drought. “It is hard enough to provide enough water for all the people, we’d never waste some on a duck!”, said the shop owner before cruelly added, “and you’re barely even a duck!”

Baron von Zeppelin twirled his well-groomed moustache around his finger and lifted up the poor, crying Zucchini duck before pla-cing him in his pocked and stor-ming off into the airship.Soon, the airship’s inhabitants found themselves above the beau-tiful country of Brazil. He wanted to set down there and play for a while in the huge forests, teeming with rare and wonderful creatures.

Adventures of the Zucchini Duck

By Eoin O’Driscoll

Part Two: The Decision Making

15Issue 3

Maybe he’d even find another Zucchini duck?The Baron sadly shook his head and said “No, it’s not safe”, and added before the Zucchini duck’s eyes welled up with tears, “Have a look down now!”The Zucchini Duck looked down and began to weep. Below him he saw vast legions on giant metal animals roaming through the fo-rests and cutting down the trees. “These must be the minions of cli-mate change!” the Zucchini duck thought to himself. “Let’s get out of here as quick as possible!”

By now the boisterous Baron was feeling hungry. He loved burri-tos but the Zucchini duck didn’t

even know what they were. So, when they reached the sky above Mexico City, the Baron set down his marvellous airship and they went off to buy some burritos. Alas, even here climate change was thwarting their efforts. There were no shops open anywhere in the city! Neither the Baron nor the Zucchini duck could understand what was going on. What kind of city closes its shops in the middle of the day? They just couldn’t work it out until a small police car came racing around the corner. The policeman rolled down the window and shouted out to them. “What’s wrong with you? Have you not heard of climate change? Mr Ozone no longer protects us. It’s

not safe to be outside at this time!”

Now the Zucchini duck was just fed up. This climate change character was even worse than those mean swans back in Lake Constance. He had to be stopped. And so, the brave little vegetable - duck decided to take a stand. He would no longer go to Antarctica and run from trouble. No, he would, with the help of the kindly Baron von Zeppelin and his marvellous airship, travel around the globe, seeking out climate change and bring the fight to him and end his grip of terror over the world.

Green Piece - Official Magazine of Lake Constance 201116

The continued viability of the Euro Project has been a major source of debate across Europe since the onset of the global economic and finan-cial crisis. The collapse of the Greek, Irish and Portuguese economies and the prospect of mass default across the continent have all brought the sustainability of the European single currency into question.

Whether the benefits of the shared currency ou-tweigh the negative effects of so many diverse economies operating under a single monetary system has long been a source of interest. On the one hand, it makes trade amongst members of the Economic Monetary Union (EMU) much ea-sier, reducing the need for currency exchange and the costs associated with it. On the other hand, it means that the monetary policies of EMU Member States have been ceded to Frankfurt, which dic-tates one single policy for the benefit of the Union as a whole. This severely limits the scope for ac-tion of individual Member States in dealing with economic crisis.

Though, media and expert opinion seems heavily

divided, here in Friedrichshafen, the Euro enjoys widespread support. Delegates here at EYP’s Summit on Climate Change were asked “Do you think that the adoption of the Euro has been a po-sitive thing for Europe?” The number that answe-red “Yes” was overwhelming.

75% of respondents declared their support for the single currency as opposed to just 14% who do not believe that it has been a positive development for the Union. Remaining 11% of interviewed res-ponding ambivalently or lack of knowledge on the subject in question.

That the Euro enjoys such overwhelming support amongst the young people gathered here sug-gests that the single currency’s prospects for sur-vival are in fact quite high. These young people are the future of our continent and they are the ones who will shape the direction of our Union in their years ahead. Their belief in and commitment to the single currency will be a source of great hope for those who believe in the merits of a common currency.

Yes to EuroBy Eoin O’Driscoll

17Issue 3

Toy Story

I remember myself taking this little Lego-mon-key home from kindergarten because I thought it would fit perfectly in the zoo I built up with my Dad. I was 4 years old back then and thinking about it now I feel lucky it was 1998. A couple of centuries earlier I would probably have ended up spending the rest of my life with only one hand because it was quite common in the middle age that thieves’ hands were chopped off when they got caught stealing.

After my mum had picked me up that day the little monkey had his first car drive and later saw what my house looked like. He wasn’t hungry so he just watched us having lunch and I had the opportu-nity to introduce him to my mum. This turned out to be one of the most important conversations in my life. At first she was ok with him moving in with us but when it came to his origin she changed her mind. She told me I could not just take things that weren’t mine unless I paid for them or the owners of those things gave them to me. The next day she made me apologise to the childminder in kin-dergarten and I had to give the little monkey back.That’s how I learned that people who do something wrong need to be punished. My punishment back then was suitable but it’s not always that easy to

find the right one for every crime. That is probably why judges draw quite high salaries although they get a lot of help by the code of law.

Apart from torture the death penalty is probably the most controversial punishment. While it is ens-hrined in law in 58 countries, 95 countries have ceased its practice completely. Many people argue it is incompatible with the human rights but some are of the opinion it is at least needed for deterrence in order to keep the crime rate low.

When I asked you if the death penalty should ever be an option in criminal punishment I already heard several “no’s” when the term “death penalty” left my mouth but actually there are six delegates among you who are in favour of it. Finland, Poland, Romania, Spain and the Netherlands were the concerned countries; although use of the death penalty has ceased in all of those countries.

That number would probably have been much higher if we had a delegation from Saudi-Arabia because apparently one can get a death sentence pronounced for numerous ‘crimes’ there: witche-ry, procuration, adultery, rape, drug dealing and for turning away from Islamic belief.

By Timm Brünjes

Green Piece - Official Magazine of Lake Constance 201118

Caught on the spot.

19Issue 3


I’ve seen the movie “Quantum of Solace” twice. The first time I completely missed the point of the movie, because I almost fell asleep. Or maybe, it was because I kept getting distracted by Olga Kurylenko and her insanely captivating eyes, but that’s beside the point. The second time around I discovered that the movie was about chasing an environmentalist, appropriately called, Dominic Greene. At first he may seem like a good guy, with him trying to save the planet and all that. However, soon James Bond discovers he is helping General Medrano stage a coup in Bolivia in exchange for a piece of desert.

Now why would Mr. Greene be interested in said piece of seemingly barren land? Well, as it turns out, that piece of land holds most of Bolivia’s fresh water reserves, which Greene is now going to charge the Bolivians for and I don’t think that they’re going to receive a special discount! The movie got me thinking of the sometimes ruthless nature of the free market; just look at the big oil companies of today and imagine what those same companies would do if they owned water instead of oil.

Since roughly the mid 1800’s we’ve been sha-melessly using oil to provide the energy we need to build the comfortable society we live in now. By the mid 21st century we’re likely to run out of this

resource. At this stage I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone that using oil is not exactly the most environmentally friendly source of fuel. This may sound mean and conceited, but when thinking of the atmosphere it might actually not be such a bad thing, since the sooner we have exhausted all of our oil, the sooner we will have to find something that, most probably, will be more ecological. Or at least it would be an opportunity to start from a clean slate.

Then again I’m afraid the fight over now scarce oil reserves will only be exchanged for the fight over water. The UN estimates that, by 2025, for-ty-eight nations, with a combined population of 2.8 billion, will not have access to an adequate amount of water. Who knows how many Dominic Greene’s already exist out there? Water is threate-ning to become the new oil; the difference being that considerably more deaths will result from an unmet need for water than from one for oil.

Having lived an existence so heavily dependent on oil, growing up in a barrel, where even our eco-nomy seems to revolve around the price of that very barrel, its interesting to see what will happen once we inevitably run out of it. Assuming that I live to see that.

Growing up in a BarrelBy Saga Eriksson

21Issue 3

Teambuilding is the first and, for many, the most exciting aspect of an EYP session. Copious amounts of silly games are played and we generally make fools out of ourselves. We pre-tend to be Chickens, we cross imaginary rivers and hunt bears. But why? What is the purpose of all this nonsense?

Teambuilding serves as a mean of transformation. When dele-gates first arrive at a session they are grouped into commit-tees with several strangers who are linked only by their shared cluelessness as to what they have gotten themselves into.

Through teambuilding they become forged into a tight knit team. They become close enough to passionately debate the pressing issues of our time while never breaching an ove-

rarching atmosphere of mutual respect. They become close enough to collectively articulate a vision for their future through the creation of their resolution. They become close enough to colectively work together and fight tooth and nail to defend their resolution in front of their peers. Oftentimes, they become good friends.

Games like ”Multi-legged Mons-ter”, ”Untie the Knot” and ”IKEA” may seem silly. Nevertheless, once the delegates get used to them, they start to enjoy the mo-ment as they play these seemin-gly childish games.

At this session we have untied human knots and then done it again in silence or with blind-folds. We have learned to solve whatever problems are thrown at us, no matter what obstacles

are thrown in our way.

We have formed 3 and 4-legged monsters out of 6 or 7 people. We have crossed vast imagi-nary rivers together with only 3 or 4 stepping-stones. We have learned that together we can achieve much more than would ever be possible on our own.

We have heard the sad tale of Abigail and made our judge-ments on its characters.

We have learned to respect each other’s values and beliefs while nonetheless passionately defen-ding our own position.

Everything learned through these games will be of great benefit over the next few days while forming the resolutions and preparing to face GA. Most of all, however, we had fun.

TeambuildingBy Eoin O’Driscoll

Two Green LanternsBy Veronika Drzková


Unfortunately, people don’t natu-rally behave environmentally frien-dly. We’ve lost respect towards our planet. In order to regain it someone needs to show us how. Here in Friedrichshafen we have two role models who are constantly giving us advice how to be greener. Cora and Leo, the two Chief Environmental Officers, agreed to share their experiences and impressions in a short inter-view before one of the countless organisers’ meetings.

When organising this session, they are the people who are res-ponsible for making it as environ-mentally friendly as possible. Their work already started at the begin-ning of June, but the main work has remained to be done during the session itself.Having such a specific role makes other organisers afraid of them; fear is not a unique feeling. They are the ones who decide whether others walk or go by car. Indeed, they possess great power. Luckily, they don’t misuse it; their only goal

is treating our planet nicely.

Cooperation with the region has turned out to be very important and beneficial. They managed to get a lot of material for free. We all admire the cars, but there’s much more. Thanks to regional support, all the drinks or apples are free of charge as well.

Moreover, the original plan was to have fair trade cookies for the Cof-fee Breaks. However, the price of such goods is too high for an EYP

They are the ones who de-cide whether others walk or

go by car.““

23Issue 3

session. Nevertheless, “we try to make sure that we get organic drinks only.” The price of organic products is a real problem. “People are supposed to do something about the climate change, but they often can’t afford it.”In their opinion, the best way to be environmentally friendly is “to think ahead, think about the fu-ture”. Think about the effects of our behaviour and prevent harmful consequences.

An aggressive attack of seve-

ral wasps led us to talking about them a little bit further. Cora belie-ves that “they are going to kill us if we don’t do anything about the cli-mate change. It’s getting warmer; we’ll have more animals, tigers and lions. And I don’t want to be killed by a lion in Germany. I hate wasps. I hate insects in general. But my theory is that they are attracted to us because they think that we are flowers, since we are so pretty.” Leo remarks that “they are black and yellow which are the colours of nuclear power signs.”

Thanks to this session, they know that they can actually change so-mething; they are role models for 90 people, which is really satis-fying. Also, they’ve been surprised that there are enterprises, which are willing to offer help to fight the climate change.

And the final message to you, the delegates: “Don’t only talk about solving the climate change but do it. And start in details.”

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24Issue 3Green Piece - Official Magazine of Lake Constance 2011

Lake Constance 2011 is

Green Piece - issue 3

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Transcript of Green Piece - issue 3