2009-01-07 47 9

Unterhard, Switzerland. Just east of Weinfelden.

Preparations

I was sitting around at the university studying, when I reached the point of exhaustion. I decided to take a break and check the usual web sites. Well, the geohashing page sure is way up the list. When I saw todays point would be only some 20km from Constance, I decided to give it a try and emailed my fellow geo hashers Lukas and Mara. Some two hours later Lukas told me that he had finished his project in Group Theory and was willing to go to the hash; but not at all costs. Same with me. So I called Mara to see what was up. She was not sure and wanted to call me later. Well, two and a half people in were not too bad. So I started preparations, getting aerials and driving instructions. An hour later, at around five, Mara called to give the go. Cool!

We ran into the same camera problem as last time. The only camera available to us had an empty battery pack. Since we took the charger with us on Sunday, it was still in the car and nobody had taken it out and charged the battery since. Fortunately, Lukas lives in an apartments building with many other students: We went around and rang the bell until we found someone, who would lend it to us for an hour. Thank you Till!

Expedition

As we were driving close to the border, I realized that my ID and my passport had expired shortly before Christmas 2008. The last time we drove into Switzerland, there were no border guards and I was hoping that the Schengen treaty, which Switzerland joined only this year, would protect me from controls. This time I was not so lucky. There was a border guard and he was checking the car in front of us. Well, the Swiss don't seem to take Schengen too seriously, I think. As we drove closer, the guard looked at us, saw our friendly faces, and waved his hand, to let us pass. Luky me. I really have to get a new ID...

Driving to Unterhard was pretty easy. We stuck to the road to Weinfelden and just before it, we took a dirt road, covered in snow, and drove up a little hill. Mara was complaining that her car would not make it. But it is a really well done piece of Japanese engineering and made it up without any trouble. We parked the car in front of a Swiss farm building. As we got out, we could see the farmers through a window making diner. As we were not here for eating, we looked out for the two barns, behind which the hash point would be. Piece of cake! As there was no fence or any keep off sign in sight, we walked behind the building and took some pictures. Lukas was experimenting with the camera and soon found out that the flash does not go beyond a couple of meters. So we played around with no flash photos but they either turned out all black or blurry. So we took some close ups which you can see below.