“If you have not bathed in the thermal baths of Etruscus, you will die unwashed,” the Roman poet Martial enthused at the end of the first century A.D., describing a friend’s bath. The water there was so clear, he said, that one might even think the marble pools were empty.

Coral reefs are beautiful – and extremely important from an ecological standpoint. Christina Braoun, a student enrolled in the master’s degree program in Biodiversity, Evolution and Ecology at Freie Universität, plans to study them up close and personal over the next few weeks.

Glaring sunlight, a red sand floor, the unique sounds of the bush and grassland landscapes of Zambia, home to cicadas and more than 700 species of birds – about 30 hours of travel away from Berlin, a whole different world awaits: Chimfunshi, in the north of Zambia.