2013-01-07 48 8

Mon 7 Jan 2013 in 48,8: 48.9447156, 8.1796635 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

Really near the Border to Germany, accesible I think and hope

Participants

RecentlyChanged and Deuded

Plans

Take the tram to Lauterbourg, no further plans.

Expedition

RecentlyChanged telling his Intro

I started going out of the house at 4.45 pm, taking the tram to Karlsruhe. The tram was surprisingly fast at the mainstation of Karlsruhe, because it was the only fast Express train of the day (no proof) so I thought I'd walk the rest of it, because I didn't want to be early at the home of Deuded. I walked into a mean row of streets. on every crossroads I thought something like "going left or straight is a little bit to far west, but right is way to far east, so I walked a totally idiotic way and ended up at the first tram station I found, called "Karlstor". There I called Deuded that he can tell me where I have to go. He looked for a tram to his home and called me back a minute or so later. He asked: is there a line number 6 arriving? I told him yes, because on both sides of the station, a tram with this number was arriving, and after having changed the sides really fast, I finally made it. Five minutes or so later I was back at the main station and another three or four I was at his home. There he awaited me and we had to bike really fast back again to the mainstation. There we needed lot of time to find the right platform, because it's number was 101 (all the others have numbers from 1 to 12). It was well hidden, but we made it about 1 minute before departure. Now we were ready to hash :)

Arriving in France

As we arrived in France, deuded recognised that he lost his cap, that he got for christmas, during running from one platform to the other when we had to change trains. Damn, what a beginning! The first thing we did in France was (of course) going to a french supermarket to buy cheese, salami and baguette. Nothing could go wrong now, we had enough water and food for a night and we had warm coats! From Lauterbourg mainstation, where we arrived, we had cycle for approx. 5 km air-line distance basically just next to the train track. Unfortunately, the gravel road became less "gravel" and turned into a "mud road" because it is mainly used by trucks and tractors driving to a local gravel quarry. After 30 min, we arrived at a railroad crossing where we found a normal road for cars. We could use it for another 2 km, then we went left into a forest where the hash was.

Finding the Hash

It was really dark, cold and quiet in the forest, hard to imagine while sitting in front of a computer with all this noise coming out of it ;-) Since there was so much fog, the pics are not very pretty... After 1 km, we came to a fork, the ways splitted, but the one we had to take (according to our GPS) was not more than a path. Very muddy (sometimes foot-deep), and we just had one flashlight. We tried to bike, and almost fell over a few times. When we looked at our GPS, we recognized that we were going into the wrong direction (so far, we still don't know why, we were sure about which path to take!) We eventually found the hash after going straight through the forest (quite hard with a bike!).

The way back

From the railway station to the hash, it took us a bit more than an hour, and the last train would leave at 10.40 pm (we arrived at the hash at approx. 9.40 pm). Since we didn't want to go back the same way (we looked like hell already), we decided to follow another path that was supposed to be a dead-end street (according to Google Maps). Luckily, Google Maps was wrong, after 500m, this path was terred, and it took us just 15 min to arrive at the railway station!!!

The cap

On the way back, our train stopped at the station where deuded lost his cap (You remember this cap, it happened at the beginning of the "adventure"). We looked out of the windows but couldn't see anything. When the train started to accelerate again, deuded looked out one last time. "There she is" he shouted. Missed it, damn. We decided to get out of the train at the next station and to cycle back to get it! So, we came home way too late (we had uni next morning). What a day! :)

Achievements

Deuded and RecentlyChanged earned the Land geohash achievement by reaching the (48, 8) geohash on 2013-01-07.

Deuded and RecentlyChanged earned the Border geohash achievement by crossing the Germany-France border on 2013-01-07 to reach the (48, 8) geohash.

Deuded and RecentlyChanged earned the Public transport geohash achievement by reaching the (48, 8) geohash on 2013-01-07 via KVV.