2011-05-21 52 14

Sat 21 May 2011 in 52,14: 52.3363335, 14.6496377 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

The big Berlin meetup 2.0, as decided on the Geohashing_Day_2011_Extravaganza page.

Today's battleship location is: G 4

Location

A swamp in western Poland. Border jumping for all!

Gathering Plans

2011-05-21_52_14! - We meet at 1100 Berlin main station and try to get a train to Frankfurt and/or Kunowice! -- relet and the early deciders. +49 15771582652

Participants

Please add yourself. Only if you plan to be there, of course

Name	From	Arriving	Staying where	comments
Aperfectring	45,-122	friday 19:00 at Tegel airport	?	need to catch a plane around 13:00 from Tegel on sunday. I will have no car or other personal vehicle, so I strongly advocate transit+walking, but would also be willing to rent a bicycle if need be.
Ekorren	48,9	Friday evening by train	Greifhostel, Prenzlauer Berg	Refuse to go anywhere by car or other motorized individual traffic. Considering to bring my own bike. Will probably stay at least until monday.
Mampfred, LadyBB (+1)	50,8	Friday evening (very late) by car	Will stay at a friends place. No more room there though, sorry.	Arrived shortly after midnight. Now wondering when exactly to meet at the main station ... ?!? Update: just received a text from Ekkoren, meeting 10:00 at lyx or 11:00 at the main station. We'll go for the main station and probably some breakfast at the Wirtshaus Hasenheide around 09:00 if anyone wants to join us ;)
lyx	52,13	long ago	at home
relet	60,10	directly to location
Crox	46,6	Saturday morning, by train	Prenzlauer Berg area	My train is being canceled/rerouted. Was supposed to arrive at 7:20, as of 9:00 it's about 3 hours late, which means ETA 10:20. Plane to catch on Sunday at 12:30 (Schönefeld airport)

Plans

Getting to Berlin. Or the hash. And back, possibly.

Describe your travel plans here. Maybe someone will try to intercept them spontaneously.

Ekorren

My ticket says that I have to catch a train at 22:58 from Berlin to Hamburg on friday evening, and to reach that, I can take any reasonable local train on a direct route which arrives there in time to just barely miss it and be forced to stay at Berlin instead. This allows me to arrive not earlier than 15:42 and not later than 22:47 at Berlin Hbf, and includes the option to schedule a stopover along the way.

ETA 1942 Hbf

• Stuttgart-Nürnberg-Hof-Reichenbach-Leipzig-Falkenberg-Berlin

Aperfectring

I arrive on Friday night at Tegel around 19:00, and will want to get some food at that point, or shortly after. I fly back out from Tegel at 13:00 on sunday afternoon, so need to be at Tegel by 12:00, and preferably a bit before that.

Mampfred & LadyBB

Will take the car after work from Wiesbaden on friday night, so we'll probably be too late to meet up on friday. We'll probably prefer to leave the car and use public transport on saturday but can probide car if necessary. Depending on how things go, we might have to head back saturday night already.

Where to go (general comments)

It's been decided that Berlin will depict the general area of the hash to visit, but that does not necessarily mean that the hash to visit will be in the Berlin graticule or even within of Berlin.

Options include:

• Visit the point in the Berlin graticule, whatever that may be
• Visit another point in a nearby graticule, which looks nicer or better accessible
• Do a multihash if a consensus is not achievable
• Hijack a plane and visit the globalhash
• Visit some alternative voted location which is not really a geohash.

Comments, preferences, conditions by various participants:

I would generally try to avoid alternate locations and prefer to go further out in case the closer ones are not good. I refuse to go anywhere by car. After about 150 expeditions and never using a car to get to the hash, I would really like to keep that chain going. I consider to bring my own bike, to be able to cover distances from the nearest train station which are too long to walk. --Ekorren 19:36, 9 May 2011 (EDT)

I too would strongly advocate against alternative locations, and also second Ekorren's position about cars. I won't have a bike, so also would prefer against one where that is required, but am not totally against renting one for the day. --aperfectring 01:49, 10 May 2011 (EDT)

Location voting (suggestion)

This is a suggestion how to vote for a location. Feel free to oppose to the suggestion. This is not an actual voting mechanism which gives a result using some algorithm, but should serve as a base for a consensus decision.

How it is supposed to work:

• Someone evaluates an actual hashpoint referring to accessibility, reachability, and other comments.
• Everyone rates the location as one of the following:

• Prefer - you think this one is the one (you may give that vote to multiple locations)
• Accept - you think this is a place as good as any, so just... move on, it's good.
• Do not oppose - you don't think this is where we should go, but if the group decides so, you would still tuck along
• Veto - You wouldn't want to go there and seriously consider to cancel the trip if the others go here.

I support this voting method. I will take responsibility for tallying votes, and will do so at 22.00 Berlin time. My proposed algorithm for determining locations:

1. Add up the number of people who Prefer, Accept, or Do Not Oppose for each location.
2. If there is a clearcut winner at this point, that is the location. If not...
3. Take the top 5 locations (if there is a tie, all locations in the tie are included), and proceed to the next step.
4. Assign points values for each of the vote levels (Prefer = 5, Accept = 3, DNO = 1, Veto = -2) and tally up the score.
5. If there is a winner, that is the location, if there is a tie...
6. Between the tied locations, pick the winner by the number above, if there is still a tie...
7. I am just going to pick my favorite, or maybe propose a multihash, if they are close enough together. Sorry, only so much can be made fully democratic on such short of notice...

I also reserve the right to change the location if the algorithm seems to have chosen one which most people are unenthusiastic about. The main goal should be choosing a location that works for the most people, though. --aperfectring 05:13, 19 May 2011 (EDT)

Location evaluation, please help

Useful links:

Anthill map overview for 2011-05-21, with distances from Berlin main station

Example evaluation entry:

Location: Probably a field outside of Kleinkleckersdorf

Accessibility: Certain risk of inaccessibilty if field is in agricultural use

Train: Großkleckersdorf, 5 km, ticket zone C¹, 50min from Berlin, hourly

Bus: Kleinkleckersdorf Rathaus, 2 km, sporadic, line 666 from Großkleckersdorf station

Suggestion: Take the 12:34 train out to Großkleckersdorf, 13:35 by bus from there to Kleinkleckersdorf, walk out and back

Votes:

• Do not oppose (but would prefer something that's not a field) --Someuser

(¹ ticket zones are: AB (that's Berlin), C (that ~10 km ring around Berlin with e.g. Potsdam, Schönefeld and Strausberg), Brandenburg (everything else within of the state), or give the country/state. This is needed to know what to buy in the morning.)

The list below only includes the closest / best accessible graticules, please expand as further suggestions go.

Berlin 52,13

Location: Looks to be private property near Wildau

Accessibility: It has potential, but could be denied due to trespassing laws.

Train: Wildau Station, about 6km walk/bike from there

Bus:

APR: DNO

Mampfred: DNO

Brandenburg 52,12

Location: A green field west of Kloster Lehnin

Accessibility: Could be agricultural land, whatever the accessibility is based on that.

Train: Krahne Station, >10km from there, most likely by bike.

Bus: Train to Brandenburg an der Havel and from there by Bus to Grebs, from there ~ 1km @ 9:41, 12:41 and 17;41

APR: DNO

Mampfred: Accept with bus @ 9:41

Frankfurt/Oder 52,14

Location: On the edge (possibly in) wetlands southeast of Kunowice in Poland

Accessibility: Assuming right of access is liberal, no worries on trespassing. Could be in the wetland, though

Train: Kunowice Station, fairly close.

Bus:

APR: DNO

Mampfred: Accept

Neubrandenburg 53,13

Location: Just off an access road in greenfields between Arendsee and Schonermark.

Accessibility: Based on accessibility of greenfields. Kinda far from the station, either need a bus stop or a bike.

Train: Prenzlau Station, 16km away.

Bus:

APR: DNO

Mampfred: Accept with bus service, but it looks like it's a on-demand service that runs 8-13 on saturdays, i.e. we might not get back ... in that case Veto

Szczecin 53,14

Location: Southeast of Podjuchy, Poland in forest land.

Accessibility: Assuming right of passage, could be fairly accessible.

Train: Podjuchy Station (~ 3hr ride), about 7km walk/bike from there.

Bus:

APR: DNO

Mampfred: DNO

Dresden 51,13

Location: In a forest northeast of Lampertswald

Accessibility: Based on the accessibility of the forest. Looks to be quite accessible though.

Train: Lampertswald Station, about 6km walk/bike from there. The trip is about 3 hours long each way by train + hiking time.

Bus:

Comments: We would need to meet at Berlin Hbf at around 11:00 in order to reach this one by 16:00.

APR: Prefer

Mampfred: DNO

Cottbus 51,14

Location: In a forest between Klitten and Mucka

Accessibility: Based on the accessibility of the forest. Looks to be quite accessible though.

Train: Klitten Station (~4hr ride), about 5km walk to the end of the road, then maybe 0.5km from there through the woods.

Bus:

APR: Accept

Mampfred: DNO

Leipzig 51,12

Location: In a forest or potentially private property east of Brandis

Accessibility: Based on the accessibility of the forest/property. Looks to be quite accessible though.

Train: Either Machem or Altenback stations, under 6km from each of them.

Bus:

APR: DNO

Tickets

There are affordable network daypasses for one or five people. Those are often cheaper than using single tickets, even if it's only one ride out and back. The following table is valid for weekends, further restrictions apply on weekdays. All are valid on local trains, metro, bus, and some boat lines, none are valid on fast long distance trains.

Area	single ticket	daypass for 1 person	daypass for up to 5 people	comments
"AB", that's basically Berlin itself	2.30	6.30	15.00
"ABC", that's Berlin plus a bit of the surroundings, e.g. Potsdam	3.00	6.80€	15.50€
Berlin (AB) plus one straight line to some destination which must be outside of the ABC area.		varies with distance	- n/a -	25% discount with BahnCard
All of Berlin and the state of Brandenburg	varies	20.00	see below
All of Berlin and the state of Brandenburg, plus a few places behind the border	varies	see above	28.00	Brandenburg-Berlin-Ticket, valid e.g. to Szczecin
All of Germany			39.00	Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket, outside of Berlin not valid in most buses etc.

Bike transport is 1.50 (single trip within of Berlin), 3.00 (single trip within of Berlin and Brandenburg), 4.50 (daypass for railways in all of Germany), 6.00 (daypass for Berlin and Brandenburg, including U-Bahn and ferries)

Suggested timeline

Friday around hash o'clock

• 15:29 - zbot summoning ritual
• 15:30 - announcement of coordinates
• 15:31 - traditional chorus of boos

Friday evening

• Participants arrive at Berlin or resist the urge to leave the city if already there.
• Discussions about the coordinates will go on in the IRC, on the wiki and by other means of communication including talking in person.
• Consensus where to go will be reached or not.
• Destination will be announced
• Recommendations about how to get there will be issued or not, and possibly ignored.

Questions:

• Shall we make a meeting point for people who want to meet already in the evening, to make plans together?
• When and how will the decision made where to go?

Comments: I am all for having a meeting Friday evening. Someone else will have to suggest location, though, because I know absolutely nothing about Berlin. --aperfectring 01:49, 10 May 2011 (EDT)

DId you guys actually meet? Did you decide on a time to meet saturday morning?!? - Mampfred 18:54, 20 May 2011 (EDT)

I think we should all vote in the following manner:

• Place votes in a table like this: Hashpoints/locations I am willing/able to go to, from most willing/able to least willing/able | Hashpoints/locations I cannot/refuse to go to
• I suggest that every person put Berlin and the 8 surrounding graticules at the very least into their lists.
• Then we attempt to remove all of the locations where people voted cannot/refuse.
  • If we succeed at removing all of cannot/refuse locations, and still have more than one location up for grabs, then I suggest condorcet among the remaining locations to determine the winner.
  • If we cannot accommodate everyone with one location (which I sincerely hope doesn't happen), then I suggest we split up into two (or more if needed) roughly equal sized groups and visit two (or more) different locations, then set a meeting place for all groups/geohashers.

If anyone has a better suggestion, voice it! This is just something I came up with off the top of my head. --aperfectring 01:49, 10 May 2011 (EDT)

Saturday morning

• Meeting at Berlin (central station?)
• Last possibility to place bets what will go terribly wrong on the way (like that the bus timetable at the bus stop says there are no buses at all although the electronic timetable claimed there were. However, such a thing never really happened before, did it?)
• Setting off

Questions:

• When shall we meet?
• Which tickets to buy (depends on the actual location)

Comments:

Saturday afternoon

• Reaching the point
• Trying to find out who's missing
• Find a consensus when to stop waiting for those who won't come
• Generic activities at the hash
• Going back to Berlin

One week month later

• Still discussing who has to write the report

Expedition

A success! More to come later.

Aperfectring's Report

The journey to the hash really started many months ago when relet and I decided that we wanted to start organizing an epic event for geohashing, which is akin to what Journey to the End of the Night is to SF0. After some discussion, we decided that we should involve the whole community in the decision, to try and get the community as excited about this as we were. We also decided that GHD2011 would be a great time, since it is the first combination Geohashing Day and Mouseover Day since inception. The rest of this can be read on the initial planning page.

Starting in January, I started to have some health concerns, and had tentatively put off my trip to Europe until that was all settled, and it in fact was eventually completely cancelled. Cue business needs. My company suddenly had a need for me to spend some time in a small town in northern Sweden for some time, starting in mid April. This time, I already knew, would include Geohashing Day. My ability to join the expedition was revived!

As for travel specifically for the geohash, that started on Friday at about noon, when I left the office in Sweden. I walked to the bus stop, and took a 30 minute bus ride to the nearby airport. From there it was an hour long flight to Stockholm, followed by a 3 hour layover. During the layover, I used the wifi access in Stockholm Arlanda airport to research accessibility of hashpoints in and near Berlin, so that I could make educated votes. After that was done, I had a 1.5 hour flight to Berlin, arriving there at about 7PM. Once at the Berlin airport, I changed a small amount of money ($60) to euros, so that I would have some money for food and transit tickets. I then took a bus to lyx's place, which took about 30 minutes. End of the first phase of travel.

I went out, with lyx and one of her friends, to a small board game cafe place, which has huge numbers of games. Relet joined us on the way to the cafe, and ekorren met us there a bit later. We played DiXit and Pirate Fluxx while also talking about geohashing in general, and starting some basic plans for the next day's events. We eventually decided that we would arrange some meeting times in the morning, and discuss the actual location of the expedition in that timeframe. End of day one.

Beginning of day two. Ekorren arrived at lyx's place (where both relet and I had stayed overnight), and we had breakfast while deciding that, due to the delay of crox's train, we would need to stay somewhat close. We decided on the Frankfurt (Oder) graticule, which put the hashpoint in Poland, thus granting all of us a Border achievement if we were to reach it. We then headed over to Berlin Centralstation at about 11:00 and purchased our day passes on the rail. There were greetings and was a general sense of glee at what we were about to do.

Shortly before noon, we got on the train to Frankfurt (Oder), on the German side of the border with Poland. While on the train, we played another game of Pirate Fluxx. I don't remember who one either this game, or the one the previous night. However, with this game, I'm not sure that winning is really the point. =D The train ride took about one hour. Once we disembarked, we started our 7km walk to the hashpoint.

It was at this point that I should mention our very own hobbit started to become a nuisance. He was constantly complaining that we weren't stopping for picnics nearly often enough. We walked through the (very different to the US) rural areas of Poland, mostly following small trails and dirt roads which would take us in the general direction of the hashpoint. When we got to the town nearest the hashpoint, we passed by the train station we would catch a train at later.

From this point, it was only about 1km to the hashpoint, and we were also approaching 4PM. The last bit of the journey to the hashpoint was mostly through woods, and a good portion of that not on any sort of human track. As we neared the hashpoint, we were confronted by various fences, which luckily did not bar our path, and only gave rise to small detours. When we were finally getting close to the hashpoint, we saw the swamp which had previously been identified on openstreetmap.

Here we began to get a bit dismayed. Were we to be thwarted by the swamp? As we neared, we discovered that, from the edge, it was still a dozen or so meters into the waterlogged, and mosquito infested swamp. This was very bad news, because that is just outside the accuracy of our GPS units! Luckily, while some of us were mourning what appeared to be our failure, mampfred discovered a dry way to get further into the swamp. Success! With some careful navigation, we were able to make it within GPS accuracy of the hashpoint!

After some picture taking, we then quickly retreated, fleeing the swarm of mosquitoes attempting to feast upon us. We then ventured a bit further away, and decided to stop for a picnic, since we didn't need to be back to the return station (less than 1km away) until a bit after 6PM. Here we all ate various delicacies which we had packed in. Relet, lyx, and I also played around a bit with a frisbee, until we were scared we would lose it over one of the nearby fences.

We then ventured back to the train station a bit early, so that if there was a ticket office, we could purchase tickets with some time to spare before the train arrived. It turned out that the station building there was no longer in service, but the stop was still in use, meaning we would just need to purchase our tickets once on the train. At this point, we had about an hour until the train would arrive.

We had seen signs for ice cream back in the town, so some of us decided to walk there and get some, and I decided to join if for nothing else but to be doing something. The ice cream, it turns out, was all just pre-packaged cones, bars, etc, so I did not have any. We returned to the station, and talked for a bit until the train came, and we all boarded.

On the way back, we started to formulate plans for dinner, and finally decided on a vegan place in Berlin. Unfortunately, though, crox would not be joining us, because he was also in town visiting his cousin and family, and ended up going to dinner with them instead. When we hit the Alexanderplats station, we bid crox a farewell, and headed to the restaurant. There we had a good meal, and much more conversation was had. From there, we bid Mampfred and LadyBB farewell, and the remaining four of us went back to Berlin centralstation. At this point, ekorren also parted ways, and the remainders went back to lyx's place to catch some sleep. End of day two.

The final day, travel back to Sweden, begins. I consumed another breakfast, graciously provided by my host, and then packed up, and headed to the bus stop. There I bade farewell to lyx and relet, and gave further thanks for providing me with a place to sleep while in Berlin. I payed the bus fare, after which I was left with 0.09 euro from my initial exchange. I couldn't have planned that any better! From there, the trip back to Sweden was fairly similar to the trip to Berlin, just in reverse.

All in all, it was an excellent weekend, and I am extremely happy that I came!

Great circle distance from where I am staying in Sweden to the hashpoint: 927 mi (1492 km)

(many pictures to come later)

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Mampfred and LadyBB's report

We started out our trip in Wiesbaden on friday after work. After picking up a passenger from the "Mitfahrzentrale" at 6:30pm, we took only two small breaks and arrived (thanks to very good traffic conditions) in Berlin shortly after midnight.

That doesn't mean that it wasn't an exciting trip as Mampfred decided to skip a gas station and wait a bit as he still had a bit less than a quarter of the tank left to go. Little did he know that there wouldn't be another gas station for another 90 or so kilometers and the last quarter for some reason always depletes that much quicker than the rest of the tank. So he watched the indicator go into the red ... light up ... starting to blink - now imagine the feeling with a pregnant woman and a stranger in the car. Eventually a sign announced the next gas station just as Mampfred was wondering how long it would take the ADAC (german automobile club) to show up with extra gas ;)

Shortly before we arrived in Berlin we discovered that our host for the night wasn't even at home but attending the ECTA Round Dance Festival 2011 so we took another detour and picked him up before dropping off our other passenger at Hermannstrasse.

Since by then it (sadly) was already quite late, we didn't bother trying to join the other geohashers (see above). But since we both left straight after work we had hoped that by the time we reached Berlin, there would be a decision on when and where to meet in the morning in the wiki. That wasn't the case so Mampfred decided to complain on IRC (it was something along the lines of "worst planning eva, I've just dragged a pregnant woman on a 5-hour car trip to Berlin and we don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow"). He was reassured that everything would be fine in the morning though and calmed down a bit, thanks for listening guys ;)

Fortunately Mampfred still had Ekorrens mobile number from a failed meetup earlier this year so we agreed on a meetup at 11am at the main station via a couple of text messages.

Day 2 then started off with a nice breakfast with our host at the Wirtshaus Hasenheide. From there we went straight for the main station where we met the rest of the bunch. Aperfectring did a good job describing our journey to the hash so I won't repeat that here, let us just add a couple of points:

• Ekorren won the game of Pirate Fluxx on the train.
• Buying supplies in Poland is a good idea. And cheap.
• My quote of the day by relet: "We solve problems with technology rather than social interaction." when we mounted the camera for the group shot in the train on a tripod-like thingy rather than asking one of the other passengers to take the photo. Mind you geohashing is supposed to be about social interaction ;)
• The "decision" on the vegan restaurant was more of a "sure, we're happy with what you choose, you know Berlin better than we do" - at that point it wasn't clear to us though that it would be exclusively vegan, we were in for a little surprise ;)
• The long-term effect of mosquito bites are greatly underestimated - Mampfred was fine on saturday but the 25 bites started itching madly some point on sunday (and still are)

After we bid the rest of the bunch farewall, we actually went back for a quick visit to the ECTA Round Dance Festival 2011 ourselves before heading back to Wiesbaden the very same night. We actually arrived around 4:30am on sunday morning and fell into bed with the good feeling of having "achieved" something ... well ... great. We had a marvellous time and would do it again anytime (if the +1 allows us to do it in the future).

Thanks guys and see you at a hash!

Photos

border geohash!  Słubice  ekorren + aperfectring  ladybb + 1  lyx + hobbit  train in...  ... Kunowice station  train schedule  more of it  group picture on the way back  group picture on the way back (look for the differences!)

Achievements

• Land Geohash
• Border
• XKCD-100 (all except lyx)
• Meetup
• Hobbit (relet only)
• Public transport
• Migration
• Geohashing Day
• Minesweeper * 2 (Mampfred, anyone else?)