ACCESS The ultimate experience 2010 Belgrad

Certainly not a typical destination for mid-December, but when the ACCESS (Academic Congres of Civil Engineering Students) calls the IACES community together, they even make the cold journey to Belgrade. Three members of the LC Karlsruhe (Merlin Best, Frederic Evers and Heiko Langel) were able to spend a cold but very interesting week there.

During the week we had the opportunity to visit several research facilities, buildings and construction sites. Of particular note is the St. Sava Temple, this monumental place of worship can hold up to 10,000 worshippers and has been under construction since 1935. In addition to this rather historic building, we were impressed by the newly built Avala Tower. The previous television tower on this site was destroyed by NATO in 1999, making the first Avala Tower the tallest building ever destroyed in a war. In 2010, an almost identical 205m high new tower was inaugurated. We visited the viewing platform in thick fog, but we couldn't even see the ground from there. But we can at least claim to have been on the tower.

The most expensive structure on this exchange was undoubtedly the Ada Bridge. This 320 million euro construction project crosses the Sava River and, once completed, will be the longest cable bridge with a single pier. This pillar is 200 meters high and can be seen from all over the city. However, the sight of this construction site inevitably raises the question of whether it could have been a little simpler and cheaper. However, the bridge is presumably intended to show what this relatively young country is capable of. However, most of the engineering and construction work was carried out by companies from Germany, Austria and Slovenia.

In addition to construction sites and buildings, we also visited the university's hydraulic engineering laboratory and the Jaroslav Černi Hydraulic Engineering Laboratory. There we were given an insight into the work of the researchers and ongoing projects. After the technical program, we also had enough time to experience Belgrade. In addition to a streetcar tour and a city tour, we visited Tito's grave, the fortress and the Red Star Belgrade soccer museum, which really made us wonder whether soccer isn't a religion after all.

One afternoon, the GB meeting (general meeting of the IACES umbrella organization) was held. The new board was elected, which Iva Popovic will chair again in 2011, and the venue for ACESS 2011 was decided. This will take place in Skopje (Macedonia) in October 2011.
Exhausted after a week full of interesting impressions, we made our way back to Germany.

Text: Heiko Langel