2010-10-23 49 8

Location

Inside a lake in Untergrombach.

Participants

Plans

see Robyn's talk page

Expeditions

Wade & Robyn

Wade and Robyn checked out of a hotel in Walldorf and took a

taxi with their luggage to the Wiesloch-Walldorf train

station where they found their way to the southbound platform

and waited for Ekorren's train.

The appointed train arrived, stopped, and then started moving

again. Wade and Robyn discussed the dramatic reveal which

trains offer in blanck and white movies. The train pulled

away, dramatically revealing ... Nothing and no one. An empty

platform. Ekorren must have jumped off quickly to come

through the tunnel to our platform. Except that someone who

wasn't him came through lugging a duffel bag. After just

enough time for us to wonder how we should deal with the

implications of the nothingness and no-oneness which had been

revealed, Ekorren appeared at the stairs and said, "Robyn?"

He had stopped in the tunnel to help a native German

speaker use one of the fancy ticket machines that

challenged Robyn on her first geohash. Ekorren is a transit

expert.

After figuring out who each other were, made slightly more

difficult by the fact that Wade and Robyn were not standing

next to each other as Ekorren arrived, all three of the

geohashers, and all of Wade and Robyn's luggage, were loaded

onto a southbound train, disembarking at Bruchal. Bruchal is

six kilometres from the geohash, but it was a required stop

because it has luggage lockers. Wade and Robyn stowed their

luggage in a large locker with an elaborate key, then went

down an elevator and back up the stairs to the same platform,

which turned out to double as both platforms 1 and 6.

There was a bit of a break before the next train left, and

Robyn had apples to share. "Is food allowed on the train?"

asked Robyn, expecting that no it wouldn't be, because the

trains seemed fairly clean, and "no food" is a pretty common

rule on public transit. Ekorren pointed out a pictorial sign

above the door of the train which he claimed forbade

alcoholic beverages and stinky food. Robyn isn't sure she

believes him, but ate her non-stinky apple anyway. At

Untergrombach we got out of that train and Koepfel was

waiting for us, making it four geohashers en route to the

lake.

Walking to the geohash

We walked from the station to a park nearby, and then

followed the path around the lake. Although the Untergrombach

website advertised this lake as used for swimming and other

recreational activities, the end where the geohash lay was in

a nature protected area and it was forbidden to leave the

path. We drew abeam the geohash point at about 11:30. We were separated from the lake

by a thick bank of brambles and reeds. The rule about there

always being brambles in the last few dozen metres to the

geohash continues to hold. The hashpoint was about 20 meters into the water. Nobody wanted to swim, as it was rather cold, no boat in sight either.

Ekorren had come prepared to try and achieve a proxy hash

here, with a waterproof box and string, but we're geohashers,

not professional box hurlers, and no one pretended to possess

the ability to hurl the box a sufficient distance through the

bushes into the lake. There was another access point to the

lake a little further on, where the path came right up to the

shore. We couldn't persuade Wade to perform his namesake duty

and wade to the geohash and instead determined that the

best chance of reaching the geohash involved trained ducks.

We were going to commence a duck training programme

immediately, but Ekorren had purchased an all-day transit

ticket, and he, Wade and Robyn wanted to use it to visit

historic sights, rather than go on a trip to get specialty

duck food and training equipment. We left the goehash as

coordinates not reached and simply admired the lake,

continuing around in the same direction.

Untergrombach

We emerged in a residential area of Untergrombach and then

walked to the centre of the old town, where Robyn and Wade

wanted to gawk at old things, like how about that museum,

signed up there? No, it was explained, a Heimatmuseum is the

lowest form of local museum, a "fishbone museum" that will

accept and display valueless garbage because acquisition

criteria depend on the current social position of the donor

in local society and not on historical significance.

Robyn still wanted to see the notable "centre pole house," over 500 years old,

mentioned on the town's website, so using Ekorren and

Koepfel's local knowledge we located the old house by its

classic half-timbered construction style. Half-timbered

buildings are framed with short scraps of timber, then the

spaces between the timbers are stuffed with straw or twigs

and branches and finally packed with clay and then plastered

or painted. This house turned out to also be the museum. We

looked at the outside, and translated the historic plaque for

the Canadians, then looked into the yard to see the side of

the house. There were quite a few people there, not taking a

tour, but rather building half-timbered toilet buildings for

the museum. They were doing it the modern way, and filling in the

space between the timbers with something similar to cinder

blocks, which they were cutting to shape with a saw. The

museum was closed for the day, and this was a group of

history enthusiasts, doing volunteer work for the museum, and

preparing for a local man's 60th birthday party to be held

there that evening. They invited us in, gave us Glühwein, and showed us the property, including an outdoor

amphitheater and, under it, a surprisingly large underground

storage shed. It was more like an underground banquet hall,

which was what they were using it for. They had found the

shed filled with garbage, and cleared it out. The impromptu

free tour from extremely kind people was a very geohashing moment.

We returned to the train station and Koepfel left for the day

while Wade, Robyn & Ekorren continued to Maulbronn.

Maulbronn

Going to Maulbronn meant returning to Bruchal for Wade and

Robyn's luggage, then getting on a bus that took us through a

few small towns. It was a much more convenient way to travel

than the way people got to Maulbronn for the bulk of its

existence, because it is a walled monastary with the church,

dormitories and almost all the other associated buildings

beautifully preserved.

Tübingen

Another bus, another train, a stopover in Stuttgart where

large groups of approximately teenaged police were patrolling

in expectation of violent clashes between people on opposite

sides of an impenetrably complicated (Robyn still doesn't

understand it after hours of Ekorren's impassioned

explanations) hot political debate. Mostly over transit

construction schedules. Maybe it would have made more sense

were the Canadians not so tired from all their adventures.

Ekorren took them home to Tübingen, where he explained

everything anyone could ever want to know about 1970s transit

ticket technology, thereby earning himself the Abduction

geohash achievement.


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