Weekly Photo Challenge: Green

Wissenschafts Park in Gelsenkirchen

When I saw this weekly photo challenge: Green, the first thing I thought of was “the Green Movement.”  Green energy, green buildings – all things meaning sustainable, reusable, recyclable.  Then, my mind went straight to this picture.  A picture I took when I visited the Wissenschafts Park in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

Gelsenkirchen is a city in the Ruhrgebiet region of Nord-Rhine Westfalia.  I remember reading once in a travel book I had of the area that Gelsenkirchen was called “the solar energy capital of the world.”  When you get off the train you see hundreds of bikes all around the station.  There is even a rental office right there.  I just wanted to visit the Wissenschafts Park, which happened to be walking distance.  The Wissenschafts Park, is a science park dedicated to the study of future energies.  In fact, on the roof of this building is the biggest solar power plant.  It was all very incredible.

When thinking about this challenge, it made me think about how our meanings of regular words have changed.  Like “green.”  It means more than just the color green these days.  Like the banner photo for my blog here, I took it one morning while visiting a “green complex”, Riverbank State Park.  A multi-use green space built on top of a sewer treatment plant!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Geometry

Tetraeder

This is my first post as part of the weekly photo challenge.  When I saw the challenge, I immediately thought about this structure in my photo.  I had to dig back into photos from 6 years ago, but I found it.

The structure, or sculpture in fact, is the Tetraeder.  The Tetraeder is located in Bottrop, Germany.  The name can be translated to, Tetrahedron, an actual geometric shape.  When I read the featured post for this week’s challenge, the first line was “Geometry. This challenge is about the shapes and rhythms that make up the geometry of our world.”  Besides all the wonderful shapes you can pick out from looking at this amazing sight, the symbol of the city of Bottrop, it’s also an important landmark for the region and the Industrial Route of the Ruhrgebiet!