I had planned to write my Wednesday Walk post earlier, but then I went to the Hive Humpday Hangout show my husband usually holds on Wednesdays. The topic was our impressions of the event we just attended last week, the Hive Creator Days in Graz, Austria. The impressions are still quite fresh, we didn't even get there to rest from all the walks and activities and emotions. My home screams to be cleaned, but somehow I still postpone that thing. However, you will see in today's post that we did some cleaning challenges in Graz as part of the Clean Planet activity. 🌱
This activity was held on Saturday morning. Around 10 a.m., we met at Spacelend, the venue where we had the meetings and the presentations. @solarwarrior and @tibfox announced the event, explained a bit about the project, and we got the sticks with a pair of jaws at the end to pick up the trash from the ground easily. This tool is called Reach Extender. I learned about its name just after checking it on the internet, but we called it just a stick. We also got gloves and garbage bags.
We started the walk toward the Schlossberg hill. The weather was perfect, much warmer than we expected it to be. For my trip to Austria, I even brought a winter jacket! 🤦♀ As you can see, we were in T-shirts and some lucky people in shorts.
Our route passed by the river, then we crossed the bridge, and finally we headed to the part of the climb up the hill. In the background, up on the hill, you can see the fortification. That is where we were going.
We had to make teams of four or five people. Each team would have one garbage bag and one or two sticks to pick up the trash.
Which trash?!?!
That was the question. 😂
Everything seemed so clean, without papers or plastic bottles around. A pleasure to see such a clean city, but it made our task difficult! 😂 I have to confess that at the beginning of the activity, I just enjoyed taking some photos and all the greenery around us, and my team members were those who took care of carrying the garbage bag and picking up some occasional trash we would spot.
Oops, this seems to be a bit blurry photo. 🤐
Finally, I found something for our garbage bag. Mainly cigarette butts or little papers but really, the path was so clean that each of these cigarette butts was appreciated as a treasure hahaha!
Proof of picking up trash and putting it into the garbage bag. 😉
We made it to the clock tower on the top of the hill and continued the activity, surrounded by tourists. It was Saturday, so many people were walking around and enjoying the good weather and this nice city. As we had some Hive bags and T-shirts, people spotted us and our cleaning efforts. Later in the afternoon, when we were in a tram, a man asked us what Hive was and why we were picking up the trash from the Schlossberg hill that morning. I think we did it well in promoting our platform through this fun.
The members of my team were brave and went to the edge of this wall to search for additional cans and pieces of paper. They did better than the people who are paid for that job. That was the only place where some trash could be found...
...oh, and this one too. A treasure was hidden there!! Nina was so determined to win, but my team member was too. It was a real competition between them, who would collect more garbage.
From the following photos, you can conclude that I left the stick and the garbage bag to others haha. The music played on a handpan made me visit the wooden Chinese Pavilion.
We continued toward the fortress and the walls, even though I was not sure we had to go in that direction. Anyway, I liked what I was seeing, and a few other Hivers were with me, which was a good sign that I was not lost.
The final meeting point with other teams was close to this tower. There, we "measured" the bags and the winners were announced.
My team didn't win, but we also had a lot of fun and got a group photo (thank you @godfish for taking this photo for us).
What could I highlight as the best thing from this whole activity?
Probably not the quantity of the garbage we managed to collect, but the idea, the effort and the fun we had that morning. As well, the beautiful views from the Schlossberg. 😍
My lunch was delicious too, and with a view - what more could we ask for?
