Going to Germany, want to see sustainable/green concepts

I suggest you go to the main tourist office in each city with your quest.

Since Germany is a huge producer of wind energy, you might enjoy seeing the wind farms there. I guess you'd see them just from driving around, like in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQKbF7FEf6o , but I've never been to Germany so I'm not exactly sure. I also found a map of wind farms in Germany: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Windkraftanlagen_in_Deutschland.png , and it seems like they're everywhere.

I might suggest contacting the official tourist information offices for each city by e-mail for suggestions…should be a great resource:

http://www.hamburg-tourism.de/
www.visitberlin.de

Hi Christina,

We were just in Berlin and were excited by several sustainable design aspects:

The Nordic Embassies building on the south edge of the Tiergarten Park is architecturally stunning and is completely solar-powered.

The dome of the Reichstag parliament building has a giant rotating mirror installment that cools the building below, using less energy.

All around the city, you'll see TONS of (new) bike lanes and cyclists.

And this is a shameless plug, but a professor at our town's university has been blogging about sustainability in Northern Europe on a summer study program. The class didn't go to Hamburg or Berlin, but if you can take a daytrip, Freiburg sounds amazing in terms of green innovations!

ucdesustainability.blogspot.com</ a>

Of course if you are in Berlin, visit Lord Norman Foster's famous redo/redesign of the German Parliament building, the Reichstag, which has the reputation as an example of a sustainable design and is perhaps the most controversial building in Germany.

For a view of the leading edge of a sustainable factory, visit the Zaha Hadid designed BMW plant in Leipzig, which is an easy day trip from Berlin which I have made. It builds Series 1 and Series 3 BMW's in a remarkable 1.5 billion Euro plant with many sustainable and environmentally friendly features as well as advanced production techniques. General plant as well as architectural tours are given in English. For more info, go to www.bmw-plant-leipzig.com. As an aside, the city of Leipzig is interesting as an example of efforts to rebuild a city and an economy after decades of East German rule and neglect.

I have not yet seen the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg building nor have I looked into how green it is, but I would take a look at this concert hall, which is a glass building built on an existing brick structure in the Elbe river. It has had huge cost problems and reportedly cost Euro 500 million. I have wondered if they can possibly build this design as environmentally friendly.

As a long shot, I would contact someone on the staff of Amory Lovins at the Rocky Mountain Institute, www.rmi.org, to see if they could offer suggestions for your visit and perhaps contacts.

It isn't in Berlin, but what might be of interest to you is the renovation being done on the Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. At a cost of 200 million euro, they are striving to make this the "greenest skyscraper" possible. Installing triple glazed glass & with every other window able to be opened to allow fresh air to circulate, the collection of grey water and rain water and installing the toilets that will be able to utilize this, and elevators that will generate electricity, are just some of the renovations taking place. They feel they will be able to save over 50% on heating, electricity, and water usages.

Sir Norman Foster designed the Commerz bank here and it also is an environmentally correct building that has won architecture prizes.

I would contact the universities in those cities to get information, as they will have a lot of resources at hand to point you in the right direction. There are some smaller towns that are doing a lot, but just don't know the names of them. Check out the Deutsche Welle, or Spiegel and see what articles they might have on the subject.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/

Thanks everybody for the great suggestions. I'm going to do the Fat Tire Bike Tour too so I can have green transportation.

That is a good point too for all those people doing bus tours instead of biking or walking tours. What is the carbon footprint for a hop-on-hop-off bus running all day long, sitting in traffic, etc.? Plus, most of those buses are run by big, international companies, like Yellow Cab, or Greyline, where-as most of the biking, segway and walking tours are run by locals. Money goes into the local economy and community.