Field Trip to Hostětín

Students from Trenčín and Bratislava had a chance to meet at Hostětín, where Lenka Filkaszová with the help of Mr. Andrej Piovarči and Matthias Suthe took them for a field trip. The prime goal was for the students of Environmental Science to see in practice the efforts in sustainable development and living. Students had a presentation in Hostetín's Educational Centre which was built as a passive building. We were guided and shown all the details of such a structure. Then we followed our guide outdoors where we walked through the apple/pear/plum orchard where the ecologically clean fruit is picked and later either dried in a traditional way or pressed to make a truly wonderful fruit juice that we all had a chance to sample. The cider house as well as the educational house both use solar power as well as power from the central heating plant, which is also 'green' as it runs on biomass. Crucial to the modern development of Hostetin was the building of a natural root sewage water treatment plant that we also saw. At the end of our tour we ate lunch prepared mostly from organic products, drunk the local product and also bought some high quality organic groceries as souvenirs. The sunny weather just confirmed the mood of the day.