House, flat and cabin on the campsite. Even so, it's possible to live abroad on an internship if you and your family head to a country where snagging a short-term home in the real estate jungle requires a fair bit of luck. We spoke to Pavel Zikmund from the Institute of Aerospace Engineering about what his time at TU Delft gave him, what his children can take away from their six months abroad, and how his career and perspective on climate change has shifted.
The international BAANG project has been running at the faculty for two and a half years now, and researcher Pavel Zikmund, an expert in flight mechanics, has been involved in it for the same time. Last year, he was given the opportunity to go on a six-month stay at a university that is one of Europe's leaders in aviation: TU Delft. As a husband and father of two small children, he took his whole family with him. And it was – at least in terms of the housing – quite an adventure.
"The truth is, we didn't find a place for the whole six months. The rentals there are usually for one or two years. There's a big housing crisis there, Delft is a small town and the university is growing, so there's no capacity. You had to be lucky. And in the end, I took the offer, which was only for three months," Zikmund recalls. Because his internship started in April and his housing didn't start until May, his family arrived later. By then, he was Couchsurfing himself.
"As the end of our first rental approached, I started looking intensively again and we found an apartment in The Hague. It was very expensive, so we only used it for a month, and I was commuting to university by bike at the time," he says with a smile. Then they spent the last two weeks in Delft again, but in a camping cabin. ‘But that was also very nice,’ adds Zikmund.
Although Martin and Dorothy were only three and a half and two and a half years old at the time, Pavel Zikmund has no doubt that his children also benefited from their six months abroad. "They remember fragments: trips to the sea, rides on bikes and double-decker trains. But since we've been abroad, they don't mind watching fairy tales in English. Even if they don't understand much, it's not such a foreign language to them anymore and they can figure out or pick up a lot of things," says Zikmund.
The strength of motivation
The internship at TU Delft was inspiring for Pavel Zikmund in many ways. Two very specific insights he took away, however, are paradoxically not related to science, but rather to the issue of climate change.
"In the Netherlands they are really focused on sustainability. It's not just a question of the university, it's a question of the beliefs of the whole society, because they will be the first to be affected by the impacts of climate change. A large part of the Netherlands is below sea level and those prospects of how sea levels will rise in the coming decades are not rosy for them at all. They know that if they do not do something proactively, they will pay heavily. I had the impression that the Dutch have no doubt the Green Deal is an act of survival. Here, people still see it as some kind of dictate, they try to push it out and act as if nothing is happening. And even though there are often sustainability projects in the Czech Republic, it makes a big difference whether you do it because you know there will be EU money for it, or because you want to do something about the situation yourself," says Zikmund.
That is why he is now trying to start a workshop at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, which he learned at TU Delft. It is called Climate Fresk and offers an interactive introduction to the complex issue of climate change in three hours, as well as the opportunity to come to an answer to the question of what each participant can do about it for themselves.
| Climate Fresk Climate Fresk is an interactive three-hour workshop that introduces participants to the basic principles of climate change science through a card game. This game, based on proven science, helps to understand the connections between different aspects of climate change. The workshop builds on the principles of collective intelligence and inspires active engagement in addressing the climate crisis, motivating participants to take concrete action to promote a sustainable future. The next workshop will be held at FME June, 5. (1 p.m. – 4 p.m.). |
"I did a distance facilitator course so I can lead the workshops. However, I would be most happy if there were a few students who would take up the workshop in the future or maybe a student club that would take up the topic of sustainability as we still have reserves in it. And until the situation really changes, we need to educate," believes Zikmund.
His own experience at TU Delft has made him reflect on his research focus, as aviation is a significant source of greenhouse gases. "The solution doesn't quite fit in with my expertise, because currently – at least for large transport aircraft – efforts to find solutions are going down the path of climate-neutral fuels. I realised during my internship that the research I've been doing for the last seven years or so, while a beautiful research topic, doesn't address the actual needs of society. So now I'm asking myself what to do next: I want to do something that makes sense. I might go in the field of micro wind energy systems," says Zikmund.
The BAANG internship is turning his life – at least his scientific life – upside down. In addition to his own inspiring experience, Pavel Zikmund also praises the overall impact he sees in the Institute of Aerospace Engineering's PhD students. "I am in charge of doctoral studies agenda at the Institute and I must say that the quality of doctoral students and their results is improving a lot thanks to BAANG project. We have been able to get a great start in the cooperation between supervisors and doctoral students, also thanks to the fact that we have been able to take as a model how doctoral studies are conducted not only in Delft, but also at Imperial College in London, for example," Zikmund concludes.