2010-02-13 53 13
| Sat 13 Feb 2010 in 53,13: 53.5585196, 13.3018158 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Location
On a road in a commercial area in Neubrandenburg.
Participants
Expedition
- Change of plans1. We're in Neubrandenburg now. -- relet @53,5575,13,2574 14:01, 13 Februar 2010 (MEZ)
- Coordinates reached! -- relet @53,5585,13,3017 15:34, 13 Februar 2010 (MEZ)
1The original vague plan was to visit the hash in 52,12 maybe. But since that would have involved biking through 40km of snow, relet was easily distraught from that plan. And since our own hash lay next to the taxiway of an airport (No access, even if you had had the clearance), we chose this easily reachable one in the city of Neubrandenburg, just 1h45 by train from our main station.
We left Berlin at 11:44 in the company of a friendly, if somewhat talkative family of six. We learned that they had just returned from their holidays in Turkey, but since the airport in Rostock is closed for bad weather, they had been rerouted to Berlin. We also learned that kebap makes beddy-byes, as their youngest daughter proclaimed. They had already missed a train, and this one was scheduled to be replaced by a bus service for the last stops before they would reach their destination. Afterwards we agreed that we've rarely met this laid-back parents, but I guess that's what you have to learn with a flock of four.
Reaching Neubrandenburg, we had plenty of time before 4pm. We decided to walk around the city walls and admire the brick architecture. You do get fond of bricks when hashing in Brandenburg2. The city managed to preserve its old city walls (a tiny perimeter of 2.3km), the towers and the four gates that permit entry to the city. Hence it is dubbed the city of four gates (believe it or not!). They also managed to preserve (and in several occasions rebuild) the guardposts-turned-houses interrupting the line of the city walls.
Their cathedral has met a similar fate as the houses and has been partially burned and been destroyed, and rebuilt on several occasions. Its walls of various patterns of brick and stone still serve as witness to that. The bells have been replaced particularly often, as they have always suffered when their belfry was burnt or damaged. The latest set of five bells stems only from the last decades.
After this historical excursion, we turned our minds and GPS device towards the geohash. It would lie in the east of the city, in a commercial/industrial area. We trodded through the snow, that continuously covered all but the most well-maintained walkways. The excursion led us to a more recent district of the city, where socialist slab buildings pose a stark (but not as unpleasant as elsewhere) contrast to the older brick buildings.
The hash was found soon enough (a little before 4pm, but then we don't particularly aim at Saturday hashes) by two tired hashers. After returning to the city, we celebrated with a yummy asian lunch, before paying a short visit to the Tollense lake in the south of Neubrandenburg.
2Technically, Neubrandenburg lies in Mecklenburg, not Brandenburg. The bricks are found all along the European route of Brick Gothic in the North of Germany and Poland.
Tracklog
Photos
Arriving at Neubrandenburg station.
This statue is dedicated to...
...impertinent broads.
Neubrandenburg has old city walls...
...speckled with "Wiekhouses". They were originally built as open stands instead of a parapet walk, later turned into small houses for the poor.
Wintry city walls of Neubrandenburg.
There are also towers.
And four gates, which gave the city its nickname.
The kids can play invaders.
Icicles
Spacing matters. (The inscription now says something like "solid (o)glory")
A rather nice brick gothic cathedral. (You can tell we're into bricks now)
Made from both red and yellow bricks. We assume that they respectively originate in Mildenberg or Rathenow, and Glindow.
lyx liked the non-brick walls too
High cathedral is high
There are four of these, remember?
The other kind of block architecture
Nearing the hash. This company is indicated on the maps.
Reached the hash.
Stupid grin, and a tired lyx.
Left a card.
We then visited the Tollense lake. It was snowed over.
These are not garages, but boatsheds.
Ducks prefer water to ice.
Snoy!
Old houses.
Lyx cycling home.
