1,000,000 steps and counting! Congratulations to all those taking part at Staffs Uni in the Big Bang Global Step Challenge, our first milestone is complete. Your combined efforts so far have given us the distance needed to be able to walk to Dublin and back, Denmark or even step foot in Norway, incredible job, well done.

The area of interest we are visiting today though is Germany, the centre of which is roughly 540 miles, or just over 1 million steps from Stoke-on-Trent. Germany houses a wonderful culture of mountains, castles, rivers, beer and bread. The Black Forest, sadly not the gateau, is an iconic landmark in Germany known for being a hiker’s haven. The walking route for this is nearly 200,000 steps and spans from Pforzheim in the north to Waldshut in the south. To put the distance of this idyllic walk into perspective, you would have to walk from our sports centre to our science centre over 600 times!

Taking a quick pitstop from enjoying the scenery, Hefeweizen (German wheat beer) and bratwurst we are dropping in on another of our placement students, AJ who is a graduate student in early years education. AJ visited a bilingual school in Germany, chosen because of their ability to speak German and English, AJ was interested in experiencing how teaching and schools differ in Germany.

During her time in Germany AJ gained incredible first hand experience of working in German schools, meeting and interacting with lots of new faces, adults and children alike. Not only was the experience valuable for herself, she comments on bringing back techniques she learned that she can share and use in education in England.

Germany is also the birth place of none other than Albert Einstein, perhaps one of the smartest people to walk the earth. He unintentionally gave rise to what is dubbed as the most famous equation, which I am sure you all know is E = mc2. Whilst we’re hardly expecting you to be travelling at the speed of light, we hope that you are all thoroughly enjoying the Big Bang event here at Staffs Uni today. Keep doing your best to stay active, stay hydrated, raise those energy levels and mass your steps up so we can reach our next destination.

Blog written by Staffordshire University placement students: Adam Olivier  Level 5 BSc (Hons) Biomedical Science;  Kaliya Rostron  Level 5 BSc (Hons) Biomedical Science; Steven Lloyd-Jones Level 5 BSc (Hons) Biology