2009-04-03 48 11

In a field near Egg, 5 km South of the Mammendorf railway station. Zb went and succeeded in reaching the location.

The Expedition

Taking advantage of the E of 30 W rule, plans were made and maps were printed the night before.

The tool to find the spot.

No Batteries. As in: No Batteries Geohash

The hash was close to the Mammendorf station that my trains travel through on my daily commute to work between Munich and another place that not only sounds similar to Nerdhausen but also deserves this nickname. In Nerdhausen, there are weird electronics labs, tons of software developers, some big buildings for assembly work -- and today, the entire place was full of flowers, literally, which is very unusual.

Considering a day at work not primarily as a day at work, but rather as a mere detour on your way to a Geohash has the power to greatly improve how you feel about the entire day including the usual commute that's part of the day at work. Heck, it's even a detour with excellent, free, company-provided coffee!

Long introduction short: The Geohash began at 6am and lasted till 9pm and was interrupted with nerdy, work-related activities.

Here's Munich between 6:15am and 6:45am. The City has a somewhat amazing mixture between business and silence at this time of the day.

Max-Weber-Platz
Isar
Munich Central Station. Somebody is already very busy in the InterCity train waiting on the neighboring platform.
Wires and wireless stuff, seen while the train just left München Hbf
A blurry class 218 engine also leaving Munich with another regional train.
München-Pasing early in the morning.

This is already fairly close to the Geohash location. An incredibly spotless sun rises.

Sunrise

This is also where the detour starts. Some cups of coffee and some pages of documentation on electronic circuits later, I return.

South of Mammendorf in Jesenwang, not far from the Geohash, is a small airport. There are some planes and other flying things in the air.

Airplane.
A big airplane that looks small and a small airplane that looks big.
Sitting next to the emergency exit guarantees great leg-room.
Red Airplane.

Finally, the spot.

The Spot.

I came from East of the spot, after walking through a little village called Egg, crossed between two fields just some meters South of the spot and, after succeeding, took this picture from a point just West of the spot. The spot is where the extended lines along the shadows of the tree and the geohasher meet. I was there at 6:30pm, the sun was pretty much exactly West of the spot at this time, right behind me while I took this picture. (Sorry, 2009-04-03 and 18h30 have to be entered manually in the form, I can't get a link to work that involves the date and time.)

Hooray.

By the way, there was another guy with a large back pack just where I took this picture while I was still on the East side of the field. Dunno if he was a geohasher. He didn't look like he was staying to check out the spot.

Back to the station, the next train to Munich is scheduled to leave in an hour.

Did I mention I was not kidding you? The little village East of the spot really is called Egg. This is a sign at the road just a bit North of the spot, pointing towards Egg; and there is a picture of Egg in all of its beauty.

Egg: This way.
This is Egg, official home of the Easter Bunny.

I guess, though, that the sign is not as funny to English-speaking people as the one in Fucking, Austria. Again, no kidding, the place exists, check out the link. I've heard that the mayor of Fucking had ordered the sign to be welded to its pole, hoping it would get stolen less often. By the way, not far from Egg and today's Geohash is a town called Kissing. Cute, huh?

Walking geohashers and biking geohashers are safe. Unsafe vehicles are not safe.

Safe vs. unsafe.

Then again, why was there a gasoline truck on this same road just a minute after I saw the sign?

Geotrash...

McD Geotrash.
Pop Geotrash. If broken, it's a biker's worst enemy.

... and a Geotrash Geohash Achievement.

McD Bag Achievement.
Pop Bottle Achievement.

Mammendorf is way old.

St. Jakob
St. Ugly says: "1250 years!"
St. Nikolaus und Sylvester

And I still need to mention how really, really, nice the weather was. When I came across this sign an hour earlier on the way to the spot, i swear it still read 20°C.

18 °C at 7pm!

Back at the train station in Mammendorf. Weird. Why is a Munich-bound regional train still waiting outside of the station? Why is there an express train waiting at the platform? Just beacause the town is impressively old, this doesn't mean it's got an InterCity connection.

Regional train with class 111 engines in the evening light West of Mammendorf.
InterCity train with the last remaining class 103 engine still in regular scheduled service.

This is where a really nice and fun day took a steep turn. Off all possible reasons for train delays, it was one of the the worst: Somebody had been run over by a train some kilometers East along the tracks to Munich. I don't know if it was somebody's active decision, if it is possible to even put it like this at all -- or if it was an accident in the strict interpretation of the word. I've had train delays because of this reason before, and I've often heard the typical announcements through the speakers, always giving a reason like "emergency medical services along the tracks between A and B". This time felt different: The train to Munich left soon, it obviously had already been sitting at the platform for far more than an hour when I got there. Nearly everyone in the train was quite silent when the train went past the place where firemen were still at work doing what is hard to describe. Not that I was staring, but, well, I happened to be there, in a train that was going very slowly because of the emergency crews still working. I've always despised those who comment on such train delays with harsh comments about "better" ways to do "it", and there is almost always at least one such wise guy. The impact of such an event really is not pretty for anyone, be it emergency teams or travelers facing delays. However, when a life is lost, anything but respect seems inappropriate.

I did enjoy the contrast of being in Munich's busy train station half an hour later, with all the life happening there.

This was the sunset, back in Mammendorf, while I was still at the station.

Looking West in Mammendorf.

The world, no matter what, will keep turning, of course. I rode my bike home from Munich's station in warm air that felt like the first summer-like night of the year.

Just for the sake of completeness it should be mentioned where the geotrash went: The paper stayed in Mammendorf, the bottle is at home, waiting to be taken to a shop and re-used:

McD Geotrash disposal device.
Pop Geotrash disposal device.


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