The Country Ambassadors Of Coincidence 2013

In a big city, the rules are clear - there is a huge amount of street names and house numbers - so you can quite easily move from point A to point X: wild creative logical interpretation leads to a real existing road.

On the countryside things look different.
If you stick to street names you'll reach your limit quite soon.
We expanded the rules.
Our "Find" may indicate ANYTHING: a village, a region, a field, a topic - anything.
And that makes it difficult if not impossible.

We had collected a preselection of milestones and diced the "right".
There was our starting point, where we searched and found: cows with ear tags, pretzels, other landmarks, a broken fence.
We decided after a long and rather confused powwow for a path to follow, next to the friendly and curious cows: LI14, which seemed somehow attractive.

“Li14”

We walked along the path which forked quickly. Left path a "Caution hunting" barrier prevented us from going further, so we took the right one. There we quickly found a bunch of interesting labeled trees, which led us to the next spot.

“Stadt / City of Liebenau, Abt. / Department 109”

We went into the city center: a square with town hall and savings bank with the only ATM in the area. Since I had to go there anyway and withdraw some cash we thought: central, money is essential.
What else? A central stone table. A fire in number 6. A hexagonal table with vines. An Israel Flag with a hexagonal star. In the savings bank: a mural with 55 views of Liebenau.

We thought “Department 109” and counted the images - image 109 (55 images counted twice) showed a green door in a green wooden gate with the shadow of a street lamp in front of it, shaped like a paddle or a river with a thickening at its end.
This door really existed and we found it strangely enough immediately.
The paddle indicates water, river course, on wood, the door on something greenish-woody ...
The lock in the gate: moated castle (castle and lock are the same words in German)! The paddle in the greenery: “Holzape” (Holz means wood), a river nearby! The thickening of the paddle: the river, the mouth!

“The Moated Castle at the Mouth of the River”

Our next stop: the moated castle at the mouth of the river ... sounds like a great movie, but was rather deserted and boring.

But there: the hexagon reappeared! In the hexagonal bell tower, in the signs, all made of six tiles. So we felt on the right track. A corner in the castle attracted us: the drying room with its sign (on a washing line: mushroom, ham, hay, socks), next to a few scattered grapes hanging there, the only living thing around. Wine we already had that before ...

Now we hiked to the mouth of the river near the castle, over a wet lawn, the fence was nicely destroyed by a fallen tree (dry wood!), so we could easily walk to the mouth of the hitherto funny babbling Holzape, which at its end suddenly stood still, stagnated. Nothing else. Apart from a tree trunk, dead again, covered by a lot of bright yellow mushrooms.

Now we were pretty clueless. Are we looking for a fungal street in some village? If we stop now and take a delicious mushroom dish with wine? Interpret the stagnant mouth? Wood, water, fungus, wet meadow ... the mushrooms were the only new and we converted the letters P, I, L and Z in numbers, and from the sum of the digits, we formed a single letter: I.

We remembered: almost all villages in the area have hiking trails named after their initials. I pointed to Immenhausen. There are eight hiking trails. We had a 17 (the castle was built in 1628, hence the cross sum), the cross sum of 17 is eight, it finally led us to the trail I8.

“I8”

Our next stop: a circular route. We could enter anywhere.

I8 was painted on many trees and poles. The road itself was dead boring.

A bench, a trash can, trout fillets (who eats trout fillets while hiking?) Wrapped hay ... there, around the corner: hidden hives! Of course, Immen = bees! In front of them a few dandelions. It's winter, but summer is coming back. Further along the road there's a strange yellow artwork: The Path to the Stars! We feel: that could be the end of the game. Three honey-yellow honeycombs (hexagonal!) pointing to the south, on the ground even more, and strangely enough still lots of colorful flowers blooming here! Bees! Flowers! The summer will come again, the circle turns, life as well, we have a wonderful feeling and so cheerfully close the game for today!

“The Path to the Stars”