2009-04-19 49 8

This was Euterkuh's and fivetonsofflax's first expedition. Our original plan was to attend the Saturday Meetup (where we would even have met someone: Koepfel had been there). However, since the weather was bad and it seemed complicated to get to the point by public transportation, we decided to postpone the expedition to the next day.

Location

This hashpoint was very easy to approach as the next train station is only in a short walk's distance. Since it was located on private property, though, it couldn't quite be reached.

Expeditions

Euterkuh and fivetonsofflax

Planning

There wasn't much planning to be done because the hashpoint was in a very accessible location. fivetonsofflax wrote down the exact location and a public transport connection and charged the battery of his GPS receiver the evening before. Meanwhile, Euterkuh bought all ingridents for baking Schmandkuchen in order to replenish the physical strenght weakened by the exciting adventure.

The approach

We met at Heidelberg Main Station and took the train to Bensheim. From there we got to Worms by bus. We missed the next train connection to the hash village Osthofen and decided to walk the remaining distance of 8.6 km. After following the road for a while, we decided to change to a dirt track for the sake of adventure and the delicious smell of a sewage plant. When the path ended, we had to follow the railroad tracks and were honked at by a passing train (Safety note: of course, we were not walking on the tracks but besides them in a secure distance) and barked at by an annoying dog. We finally reached Osthofen, from where it was only a short walk to the hashpoint location. On Google Maps, we had already seen that it might be located in someone's garden; unfortunately, this was the case. We tried to hold the GPS device across the fence to make it show the correct location. It was probably not much more than two meters away. Apparently, we seemed suspicious. The house owner, a grumpy old guy, came out and asked us what we were doing. We explained ourselves and all he said was: "Well, bad luck." He mumbled something about the necessity to be careful nowadays. Thus, we had to leave and failed to reach the hashpoint by maybe two or three meters. Afterwards we ate Schmandkuchen to feel less sad.