Such a well-behaved national park in the Eifel can be the jungle of tomorrow. People leave it to the whims of nature and watch what happens. A fascinating process that rangers like Nina Braun accompany in good humor.
You know the saying that chance goes ways where intention never can? Nina Braun, the only female ranger in North Rhine-Westphalia, must feel something like this when she reflects on her life. Actually, the petite young woman with the pageboy hairstyle had already taken a different direction and worked as a trained hotel manageress in Monschau's gastronomy. At some point, however, she developed the desire to do something completely different. It could be called a coincidence that on the day she went to the employment agency, there was only an apprenticeship as a forester available. For Nina Braun, in retrospect, it was pure luck - or predestination. In any case, the nature lover courageously took up the challenge and, from then on, for job-related reasons, also took up the chainsaw - she had to. It wasn't until a few years later that the opportunity arose to switch to the wilderness workshop in the small town of Düttling, a so-called environmental education facility. Bingo - at least the dream job.
Wilderness workshop may sound complicated to laypeople, but - if you believe Nina Braun - it's nothing but pure joy: "The forest is my workshop, after all!" The following day, 25 children are waiting for her as part of a summer camp. Nina and her colleagues will roam the forest with them to discover the secrets of the national park together. "Many children don't even know a forest and its plants and animals when they come to us" says Nina Braun. And she doesn't give the impression that 25 wild city brats scare her. "We'll make fires, build dams, hide in the forest..."
The National Park's program also includes the barrier-free nature experience area "Wilder Kermeter" where people with disabilities can also experience forests and wilderness up close - and observe black storks, red-backed shrikes, wall lizards and red deer. Nina Braun's eyes light up, the anticipation of meeting the children, but also the filled days in the Eifel forests, is evident.
Her tools of the trade: binoculars, a flint, ropes, blindfolds for blind voyages of discovery through nature, all of which she puts in a handcart along with the food for four days. Does that sound like work? Or does it sound more like one big adventure that Nina Braun is getting paid for? Oh yes, she knows she's got it right with the job in the national park: "After four days of summer camp in the forest," she says and laughs, "I always feel like I've come from the moon."
By the way, you can also book individual ranger tours in the national park and of course go on a discovery tour. And in our video you get again an impression of the work of the rangers:
And this is how you get to the wilderness workshop in Düttling by bus and train: Plan arrival.
Cover photo: Ranger Nina Braun goes where the fire is. She even goes to the fire pond at the Düttling wilderness workshop to build dams with youth groups © Tourismus NRW e.V., Ralph Sondermann
Reasons for a Vacation in North Rhine-Westphalia there are plenty - the living Cities, the old Castles and palaces and the unique Nature are just a few of them.
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