14-Apr-2001 -- The run to 53N 10E

At Easter I visited the parents of my girl-friend close to "Wolfsburg" (the city where the legendary VW " German Volkswagen " comes from). As they saw the photos of our last CP-Expeditions, I could convince them to join us visiting such a point. They were inspired, because my grandparents had already found one, too. Our objective was to discover the 90 km departed CP (my fifth) 53N 10E close to Soltau and finally we wanted to visit a Safaripark nearby.

I was already very anxious about the point, because it was situated in an area, where many CP's had already been visited, e.g. from Jost Jahn - our CP-hunter competitor. I could only assume that the nearby restricted area of the army deterred them. To be on the safe side I looked in Pending-list and e-mail-box the evening before we started. And I announced the point to jason@confluence.org.

Thus the journey started -on a fortunately sunny saturday in contrast to the rainy other days of Easter - with the car. As expected, the journey led us closely along the restricted area. After 1.5 hour we drove over a bridge, which crossed a railway line. And there the GPS showed that we were only 10m away from the CP. So we parked our car at an horsefarm at the westside of the bridge. Although MAPQUEST printed the CP near the road but on the east side I didn't want to attribute too much importance to it. But at the end the position-statement in MAPQUEST turned out to be very exact, as I had already seen at my other expeditions.

The point seemed to lie on the paddock. We met the boss of the horse farm and asked him, if we could pass. He said "Yes". We asked him if he knew about the existence of crossing geographical lines on his ground. He said "Yes". Then we asked him if already someone else had been here before to search the CP and he answered "No". But this made us suspicious...

Therefore I wandered with my girl-friend and her parents over the paddock, through thicket and over fences. At the embankment of the bridge it was only 20m left, but at the eastside of the bridge. After I had found a way to the other side the others came also. We found the CP at a forest path!

All were happily still believing to be the first discoverers. We quickly painted a beautiful sign and fixed it with a nail on a tree. Took insolating-mat-group-photo and departure. But then! The mother: "Look at this stick over there! Is it a waymark?" Ah no, I suspected something. I had seen somebody on the German CP-Side, who marks his CPs with sticks... Well however the stick also could be harmless.

Some days later in Berlin I looked in the pending-list: Ray had already visited the point, two days before us. And also the never-full-CP-hunter Jost Jahn, but 2 days after us. I can't wait to see the photos of both of them. Our sign should be on Jost's photos. Anyway we have witnesses that we have been to the CP on 14th of April in 2001.

This whole run becomes too much to me, I don't have any time left to do my study. In the good knowledge, that there are still hundreds of undetected points in the Taiga of Russia, I grant myself a break.

Andreas Tietze