2009-01-28 49 11

Wed 28 Jan 2009 in Nürnberg, Germany: 49.4462001, 11.8479133 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

On an access road between two shiny new business buildings in Amberg, Fleurystraße 3 and 5.

dawidi

I usually don't go to hashpoints that far away, but that's because most of them end up in the middle of a field or in a forest anyway and it's hard to tell in advance if they're boring or inaccessible. This one was inside the town of Amberg, which I've been to a few times before, and from the satellite imagery appeared to be at the edge of a construction site.

Research of the location on the internet told me that there were two new business buildings on the site, but the exact coordinates were between them, possibly on a road. The place was about 1 km from the train station, with the old town center between. I also picked a few geocaches I'd try to find, and found that there was a webcam cache on the town square, and even better, there would be free, unencrypted wireless internet access!

I left the office at 18:00, a bit sooner than usual, and cycled to Regensburg's central station. Bought tickets (Bayern-Ticket Single, EUR 19.00, bike ticket, EUR 4.50), and waited for my train which was at 18:30. The train ride itself was uneventful - only limited space for bikes was available, but there were no bikes other than mine at this hour. I listened to music and relaxed; didn't bring anything to read as my bike bag was already at its load limit.

I got off the train in Amberg, left the station, and cycled a rather random course through the narrow alleys of the old town. Ever since I got a mapping GPS, I have really enjoyed navigating through foreign towns at night. A few minutes later I arrived at the coordinates, and what I found confirmed my expectations: there was an access road between the two buildings, with parking spots on either side. The hashpoint was exactly on a filled pothole in the middle of that road! I spent a few minutes taking pictures from various positions around the hash, then my phone rang and I had to do a bit of remote tech support - apparently my mom's Thunderbird thought it was a good idea to randomly mark an e-mail from my cousin as "junk", despite never having received any junk mail before.

I left the hash shortly after 20:00 and continued cycling around the old town to the southeast to look for two geocaches along the way, but quickly lost my nerves and set a course for the town square instead. Since the shops were all closed for the night already, there were very few people in the pedestrian zone around the square, and most of them were groups of boys talking in foreign languages. Approaching the square, I immediately recognized what I had thought to be a kind of pavillon - it turned out to be a winter housing built around a fountain. I parked my bike next to the fountain, booted my EeePC and tried to log on to the supposedly open wireless. Signal strength was excellent, and it did connect, but I didn't seem to get a valid IP address. After rebooting, restarting the wlan adapter, and fiddling with various other settings (which shouldn't have been necessary in the first place) didn't help, and I got cold from standing in the cold wind for nearly half an hour, I gave up.

(to be continued)

• 

  The exact spot: a filled pothole in the road.

• 

  dawidi at the coordinates, seen from across Fleurystraße.

• 

  Right here.

• 

  a pharmacist (Apotheke), the building to the west.

• 

  dawidi and his bike next to the hash.

• 

  view from the south.

• 

  construction machinery.

• 

  dawidi on the town square, posing for various webcams pointed at him.

• 

  church tower housing the controllable webcam.

• 

  dawidi desperately trying to log into the wireless.

• 

  preparing to leave again.

• 

  shining my bike headlight at the tower.

• 

  on the train back home.