2011-08-06 46 7

Location

The geohash is located directly in Berne.

Participants

TheOneRing - by foot
Crox - by bike
Arches, Dave, Flurry, Fredy, Kei, Nemeova, Rahel

The Expedition

TheOneRing

The geohash was only 5.9km from my flat, as the bird flies, so I decided that is was the perfect opportunity to get the Walk geohash. The total distance was just a bit more (6.5km).

I was not expecting what I saw when I arrived at the geohash: a wonderful marker drawn on the street. Thanks the other team for that. Unfortunately they left before I arrived and we didn't met.

While I waited 4pm to come, Crox arrived by bike. We haven't met each other before and it was great because of the Saturday meetup. Together we waited talking until 4 o'clock, but the other team didn't show up again. After a while we said goodbye and I walked back home. On the way it drizzled from time to time, but way too less to complain about. In contrary, it was quite convenient in the hot and humid conditions.

Arches, Dave, Fredy, Kei, Nemeova, Rahel

Our geohashing trip was planned long ago. Well, not much regarding any details, but we all made sure to keep the day free for a geohashing adventure. The day before our trip, in the evening, when the hash points were known, we got together for a phone conference to discuss and plan the details of our trip.

During our phone conference, we saw that the hash of the Bern graticule fell right into the city of Bern. Now for some of us, this was way too easy to reach, leading to the (in hindsight, unfortunate - more on that later) consensus do a multihash, going to Bern in the morning, and from there head off to the hash in the graticule of Basel in an attempt to reach at/before the designated hour for meet-ups.

So on 2011-08-06, all of us (well, except those fortunate ones living in Bern) took a train to Bern, meeting there at 11 o'clock. Obviously, as it always is when you plan something, this did not work out, because Nemeova and Arches were arriving later. Nemeova's excuse was that her a public transport subscription that was beyond its validity date (and because it was not her but the conductor noticing this, she was also handed a hefty fine) and the renewal took what seemed like an eternity, making her miss her train, whereas Arches was just late so that Nemeova didn’t have to travel to Bern all alone.

After waiting ages for the tardy ones to arrive, we were off to buy some chalk. This was crucial, as we wanted to leave a great non-permanent mark at the hash. From Google-Maps and our local insiders, we already knew that the hash was on a road in a residential quarter, so we agreed that chalk was perfect. While shopping for chalk, a cute yellow ball with a StupidGrin™ printed on caught Nemeova's attention, which she obviously had to buy, thereby providing us with a hashscot.

After our shopping spree, Dave, Rahel and Fredy, our local hashers, started arguing about which bus we should take to get closest to the hash, nearly leading to a breakup in its course. Flurry, Nemeova and Kei used this time to buy their bus tickets, and after the argument was over, we all boarded a bus (the same one, even) which brought us pretty close to the hash, with only about 5 minutes of walking at a slow pace left.

Once we arrived, we quibbled over who’d get which color of chalk, and then started drawing a marvellous piece of art on the street. We were observed by some resident children, but they were too shy to approach us or do more than peeking at what we were doing from behind the hedge separating the road from their house. They did ask their parents what "those big guys are doing with the chalk on the road". It was quite cute, actually :-) We heard no response from the parents, though, and we continued our drawing, which was going to cause marvel and wonder later on, and neither a police patrol nor private cars could stop us (well, they caused a short break, as we had to clear the road for them, but that doesn’t count, does it?).

After finishing our marker and taking the mandatory StupidGrin™ pictures, we were off for lunch in Bern. Unfortunately we couldn't wait for Crox and TheOneRing to arrive because we had to get to our second hash in France.