BLUE RIBBON
Summary
THE ROLE OF WATERS IN THE LIFE OF A CAPITAL
Hungary's "Blue Ribbon" is the Danube. Being the second largest river in Europe it has always played a key role in the Hungarian history and her people's life. The Danube does not divide but connects the diverse countrysides of Hungary. The centres of the Kingdom always lay on the banks and the twin cities of Buda and Pest on the right and left banks of the Danube became the capital as well as the economical and cultural centre of Hungary. With our team's work completed so far, we have tried to demonstrate this role of the river. First we collected the different types of landmarks situated near the river, then we illustrated the historical role and some chosen landmarks (a symbolic bridge and the capital city). Thirdly, we focused on our city, Budapest and we examined some main environmental aspects of the tributaries, spas and one of the wastewater treatment plants of the city.
Meeting in France
For this meeting we chose two projects. The first was, planning and elaborating the logo of "Blue Ribbon". Our students planned and designed two logos which we presented in Albi for voting. The second project was to demonstrate the landmarks near the river Danube. We tried to render what a central role the Danube has in Hungarian people's life in the capital city and in the countryside alike. We concentrated on four categories, such as industrial buildings, castles and administrative buildings, bridges and churches. For the consecutive meeting we chose some of them to examine more profoundly.
Meeting in Portugal
This time we demonstrated the role of the Danube from some other aspects. Our team overhauled the importance of the Danube in the European (Ancient Greek, Roman) and Hungarian (Middle Ages, Turkish Period, New Age) history. We came to the conclusion that the river formed the integral part of traffic (shipping and river crossing) commerce, the military, administration and later tourism in each historical period. The major problems (floods, lack of a permanent bridge) were solved in the middle of 19th century.
One of the most symbolic bridges is the Mária Valéria Bridge in Esztergom. It connects two towns in two different countries and the history runs parallel with the Hungarian and Slovakian history (destruction & rebuilding). We analyzed the location of the Danube in our capital city's history, too. This theme was elaborated in detail for the next meeting in Spain.
Meeting in Spain
Firstly, we demonstrated the role of the Danube in Budapest's traffic, trade, tourism, politics and water plants for both drinking water and sewage treatment. We also analyzed the water of the Danube's small tributary, the Rákos-patak. This small brook flows through our District, near our school. Our measurements carried out with the Aquanal Quick Test proved that the brook's water is fairly polluted due to industrial and agricultural activities.
Hungary is very rich in thermal waters because of its geological structure The Earth's crust is thinner than the average so the under-ground waters have much higher temperature. Most of them can even be used for healing medical purposes. Budapest has ten thermal spas. Our team visited Széchenyi Spa. Students learnt how the thermal water is utilised in healing methods, such as bathing and drinking diets.
Finally, our team visited the North-Pest Wastewater Treatment Plant where the students learnt how wastewater of Budapest is purified before flowing into theDanube. Nowadays 95-99% of the wastewater is cleaned by mechanical and biological process on one of the three sewage plants. The remaining bacteria sludge is used to produce electricity.