2016-04-29 52 13

Location

At a street in Wilmersdorf, by a school publisher building.

Participants

Plans

Meta-alt & Evelynli

This afternoon, after class, I checked the Geohash, and it was simply too close to ignore.

Fenmar & Shiyan

Some days ago, Shiyan and I decided that we want to meet up and were looking for something to do that was more than just "watching tv while doing nothing", so I mentioned geohashing. I haven't done any expeditions lately, but was more than willing to get back into the game. Shiyan has never gone Geohashing, but is an avid reader of the xkcd comics, so the mindset is definitely the right one. Unfortunately, the only day we both had time to do something was Friday evening, and since I had to work until 5pm the hash location would have to be really convenient for us to attempt it. On Thursday evening we discovered that the point was less than 3km from my home, so naturally we decided to have a go.

Expedition

Meta-alt & Evelynli

Having found the hashpoint on OpenStreetMap, I took the classic picture-of-computer-screen for reference, in case of a lack of internet cooperation. After a brief scroll-through of the Achievements list, I packed a tin-whistle, recorder, two bananas, and three juggling balls.

I met Evelyn for a fast-food dinner at Das Schloss. As is customary for Berlin Asian restaurants, it can't content itself with a single country, so we had Chinese noodles with sushi. (And I surreptitiously grabbed a napkin for the picnic later.)

Bus line 186 happens to run straight from there to our hashpoint (ok, not juggernaut straight, but you know what I mean). This bus happens to be a double-decker, and we happen to have the amusability of small children. Top layer, front row: would recommend. Anywho, we decided to use the time to draft an email, and we got so invested in it that we rode the bus to the terminus before realizing we missed our stop. We then took the bus line back to the right station (again front row balcony), and let the Geohash+ app lead us like an amulet.

Once there, a spot luckily right outside of a building, it was time for some achievements. First, the Stupid Grins™. Then, Rosenrot, music from The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, and the Firefly Riverdance were played with some success. The Dance of the Knights from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet was played with no success. I did some juggling and gave Evelyn a mini juggling lesson. We then dutifully took out our napkins, sat down, and enjoyed our bananas.

The geohash being so easy to reach, it was time for an after-adventure. We visited the Kleingärten across the street, which were really quite cool, and as a whole not so small. Also, apparently having fake cats in your garden is a thing here.

Fenmar & Shiyan

I left work at 5pm and we met at the Grunewald train station at 6. After that we had a short stop at my house to plan the route (as I wanted to attempt the Tron achievement) and set off to the hash. It was a 2.3 km walk through the residential area Grunewald and Schmargendorf and beside some historic architectural building there was not much of interest on such a short route. I did take some pictures of some flower arrangements though.

As we got near the location, I double- and triple-checked the map for the exact spot because I really did not want to accidentally go too far and then having to backtrack as that would invalidate the tron achievement. It was clear from the map that the location was in front of the Cornelsen building, of which I took some more photos.

And we were lucky: The point was in fact right in front of the main entrance, but not inside the building, so it was easily accessible. I convinced Shiyan to participate at least in one proof photo, before we continued our way to circle back to my home.