2009-11-07 48 7

Location

A forest in the Teningen municipality, close to the Kaiserstuhl hills in the upper Rhine valley.

Participants

Expedition

Ekorren left Tübingen in the very early morning to take the train to the hashpoint, via Stuttgart and Karlsruhe. The reason for this larger detour were (a) to sell the leftover Baden-Württemberg-Ticket at a larger station like Stuttgart or Karlsruhe and (b) to pick up Koepfel in Karlsruhe. Koepfel left his home at 7:20 and we met at the main station and took the 8:04 Regionalexpress to Offenburg and from there another Regionalexpress to Emmendingen, where we had to wait half an hour for our bus to Teningen, as the bus timetables are set after the trains from the nearby city of Freiburg.

After a short walk through Emmendingen, we entered the bus, which drove along a very narrow field path to the village of Teningen and dropped us off at the stop Rohrlache, outside of the village. From there, it was another 2-3 kilometers to the Hashpoint. On our way there, we walked by a lake, which was inhabited by a swan.

The GPS signal was rather weak in the forest, but after a larger GPS-dance, we managed to find the hashpoint. We made an xkcd marker out of branches lying around, took photos of Koepfel's hashscot and celebrated a new graticule for both of us. As announced before, we reached the hashpoint at 11:15, so we're one step closer to the centurion achievement.

As we left the hashpoint and were back at the road, we realized we had plenty of time until our bus went back to Emmendingen, so we decided to take the more interesting way back and go by train from Nimburg. Unfortunately, we tried to walk through the village of Nimburg, which is a bit away from the station, to still catch the bus as a backup plan, in case we would miss the train. On the way to the village, we got a little lost though, as the field path ended in the middle of a field. Walking along the field and stepping over a small creek, we managed to find the paved path again, though, only resulting in some muddy shoes (which will get worse the next day).

At 12:23, we took a local train to Gottenheim and changed to another one to Freiburg. The original idea was for Koepfel to buy a ticket back to Karlsruhe and Ekorren going on to Basel. However, with Thepiguy announcing on the evening before that he would do the hashpoint on the next day in 48 8, Koepfel decided to go to Basel with Ekorren, continue with him to Tübingen and surprise Thepiguy the next day.

From Freiburg, we took another Regionalexpress to Basel Badischer Bahnhof. This station is located in Switzerland, the platforms and part of the tunnel under the tracks are German customs territory, though. We just left German territory for a few minutes to buy tram tickets for Basel, then went back, took a train to the swiss station (Basel SBB), during which we changed to Swiss territory again. We also entered French territory for a few minutes. Some platforms at the swiss station, where trains to France leave, are French customs territory. Actually, I've lost track about how many borders we've crossed that day. However it doesn't really matter, since all three nations are part of the Schengen Area, meaning most border controls for people travelling between these states are abolished, Switzerland being the most recent nation, joining in December 2008.

We spent the afternoon in Basel, looking at the city, looking up Geocaches, Ekorren dropping bookcrossing-books (I think he left about ~25 books during the whole day). In the evening, we went home to Tübingen (changing trains in Singen and Horb), arriving there at about 23:30.