2010-02-13 53 13

From Geohashing
2010-02-13 53 13-kathedrale2 fused.jpg
Sat 13 Feb 2010 in 53,13:
53.5585196, 13.3018158
geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox


Location

On a road in a commercial area in Neubrandenburg.

Participants

Expedition

1The original vague plan was to visit the hash in 52,12 maybe. But since that would have involved biking through 40km of snow, relet was easily distraught from that plan. And since our own hash lay next to the taxiway of an airport (No access, even if you had had the clearance), we chose this easily reachable one in the city of Neubrandenburg, just 1h45 by train from our main station.

We left Berlin at 11:44 in the company of a friendly, if somewhat talkative family of six. We learned that they had just returned from their holidays in Turkey, but since the airport in Rostock is closed for bad weather, they had been rerouted to Berlin. We also learned that kebap makes beddy-byes, as their youngest daughter proclaimed. They had already missed a train, and this one was scheduled to be replaced by a bus service for the last stops before they would reach their destination. Afterwards we agreed that we've rarely met parents as laid-back as this, but I guess that's what you have to learn with a flock of four.

Reaching Neubrandenburg, we had plenty of time before 4pm. We decided to walk around the city walls and admire the brick architecture. You do get fond of bricks when hashing in Brandenburg2. The city managed to preserve its old city walls (a tiny perimeter of 2.3km), the towers and the four gates that permit entry to the city. Hence it is dubbed the city of four gates (believe it or not!). They also managed to preserve (and in several occasions rebuild) the guardposts-turned-houses interrupting the line of the city walls.

Their cathedral has met a similar fate as the houses and has been partially burned and been destroyed, and rebuilt on several occasions. Its walls of various patterns of brick and stone still serve as witness to that. The bells have been replaced particularly often, as they have always suffered when their belfry was burnt or damaged. The latest set of five bells stems only from the last decades.

After this historical excursion, we turned our minds and GPS device towards the geohash. It would lie in the east of the city, in a commercial/industrial area. We trodded through the snow, that continuously covered all but the most well-maintained walkways. The excursion led us to a more recent district of the city, where socialist slab buildings pose a stark (but not as unpleasant as elsewhere) contrast to the older brick buildings.

The hash was found soon enough (a little before 4pm, but then we don't particularly aim at Saturday hashes) by two tired hashers. After returning to the city, we celebrated with a yummy asian lunch, before paying a short visit to the Tollense lake in the south of Neubrandenburg.

2Technically, Neubrandenburg lies in Mecklenburg, not Brandenburg. The bricks are found all along the European route of Brick Gothic in the North of Germany and Poland.

Ribbons

Lastmanstanding.png
relet earned the One hundred geohashes reached gratuitous ribbon
by completing the hundredth successful attempt to reach a geohash. (53, 13) geohash on 2010-02-13.

Tracklog

just a bit of the return trip, nothing really fancy

Photos