Reliable and relaxed, Babette Kania takes the President and other employees to their destinations. Her workplace is the President's company car, a well-maintained black Mercedes 300E. Babett Kania has been the first female driver at the Thünen Institute since 2013. She is familiar with being the only or one of a few female colleagues from her previous jobs as a driver at the Max Rubner Institute in Kiel or on behalf of the Berlin Chancellery.

"After school, I actually wanted to join the navy on a merchant ship," says the 61-year-old from Potsdam, who grew up in the former GDR. "But I wasn't allowed to because I had relatives in the West." Instead of going on board, she did an apprenticeship as a baker, got married, had her daughter and cherished a new dream: driving buses.
Dreamed of, done: in her early twenties, she completed her driving license for trucks and buses, later training as a professional driver and gaining experience at the wheel of trucks and construction vehicles. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, she conquered the whole of Europe as a young coach driver. She drove to sunny Mallorca, Italy and the snowy Swiss mountains.

Her professional highlights include coach trips abroad, a trip with the then Minister of State for Culture Bernd Neumann and trips abroad with the Thünen President to meetings in Sweden. "There's never a dull moment in science. I once picked up researchers from the peatland near the Dutch border in the evening."

35 years in 40-ton trucks, coaches and company cars and accident-free - apart from one wildlife accident - an impressive record. What can actually upset this calm, frequent driver? "Very little! But the traffic on the left in England - I'm glad I haven't had to do that yet!" she admits with a laugh.