Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

Frisch getestet – die 9-Uhr-Monatskarte des KVV

Monday, January 11th, 2010
Tram Roadsign (openclipart.org, public domain)

Tram Roadsign (openclipart.org, public domain)

Zum Jahreswechsel hat der KVV einerseits die Preise erhöht, andererseits neue Produkte eingeführt. Während ich sonst auch im Winter mit dem Rad ins Büro fahre, verkneife ich mir das im Moment ob des winterlichen Wetters. Nachdem ich eher selten vor 9:30h im Büro bin, habe ich mir heute die neue 9-Uhr-Monatskarte des KVV besorgt.

Beim Kauf wird das aktuelle Datum aufgestempelt. Die Karte ist ab dann einen Monat lang gültig¹. Die Karte gibt es für das Gesamtnetz für 52€ und für drei Waben für 37€.

Auf der Karte trägt man vor Fahrtantritt den Namen des Inhabers und im Falle der 3-Waben-Karte zwei Orte ein. Die Karte ist zwar für drei Waben gültig, allerdings muss man sich entscheiden, welche drei Waben das sein sollen.

Das Stadtgebiet Karlsruhe umfasst ob seiner Ausdehnung (bekanntlich) zwei Waben. Wohnt man also in Karlsruhe, kann man noch bis in eine Nachbarwabe (wie etwa Wörth) fahren. Wohnt und arbeitet man in Karlsruhe, kann bzw. muss man sich für eine der Nachbarwaben entscheiden, die man vielleicht doch gelegentlich mal anfahren will.

Für meine Zwecke ist die Karte genau richtig. Bisher hatte ich den KVV eher gemieden – wenn es das Wetter zuließ, bin ich mit dem Rad gefahren und ansonsten auch sehr oft einfach gelaufen, weil sowohl eine Monatskarte als auch eine Viererkarte für die paar Haltestellen, die ich ins Büro fahre, schlicht zu teuer war. Mit der 9-Uhr-Monatskarte hat es der KVV zumindest in den Wintermonaten geschafft, mich dort abzuholen, wo ich stehe. Ich sollte aber folgerichtig an den Tagen, an denen ich doch mal um 7h ins Büro fahre, aufpassen, eine Einzelfahrkarte zu lösen :) .

¹ Montags bis Freitags 9h bis 5h, Samstags, Sonn- und Feiertags ganztägig und bis 5h des Folgetages. Gilt bis zum gleichen Tag des Folgemonats, oder sogar bis zum darauffolgenden Werktag, falls es sich um einen Samstag, Sonn- oder Feiertag handelte.

When software development keeps you busy during the X-mas break

Monday, January 4th, 2010
Buggy Golf (pics from openclipart.org, public domain)

Buggy Golf (pics from openclipart.org, public domain)

I do not operate a car of my own. Instead, I’m a customer of a local car sharing provider. For the X-mas family meeting, I rent a less than two years old car.

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Mapping the woods in northern Hesse

Sunday, August 30th, 2009
Michelskopfsee

Michelskopfsee

I’m just back from a small holiday trip. I had the occasion to try out a some mountain bikes for the very first time in my life. The bikes have been very good, so climbing some hills was just plain fun.
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Freifahrt auf Kosten des KVV – wie man Kunden bei der Stange hält

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Sorry to my international readers, this post is in german language. It is about the user friendlyness of the local public transport provider, KVV.

Gestern Abend stand ich nach einer Radtour mit meinem Rad an einer KVV-Haltestelle und wollte mit der S-Bahn zurück nach Karlsruhe fahren. Zwar gab es am Bahnsteig keinen Fahrkartenautomaten, aber einerseits finden sich üblicherweise in den Bahnen welche, und die Zugführer verkaufen notfalls ebenfalls Karten.

Leider war der Automat in der Bahn außer Betrieb und der Zugführer hatte auch keine Fahrkarten mehr. Er beschied mir daher kurzerhand, dass ich vom KVV eingeladen sei und nichts zu zahlen bräuchte. Ich hätte eher erwartet, dass er mich wieder aussteigen lässt. Der KVV aber nahm das fehlende Ticketangebot auf seine eigene Kappe. Das ist zumindest bemerkenswert.

Zuerst war ich verblüfft ob der Großzügigkeit. Unter dem Strich aber denke ich, dass der KVV so das bessere Geschäft macht. Gewiss, ihm entgeht die Einnahme einer Einzelfahrt. Aber künftig weiß ich als Kunde, dass der KVV mich notfalls auch dann transportiert, wenn es mir nicht gelingen sollte, ein Ticket aufzutreiben.

Hätte ich die Bahn wieder verlassen müssen, wäre ich wohl oder übel mit dem Rad zurück nach Baden gefahren. Künftig hätte ich den KVV dann gar nicht mehr in Betracht gezogen. So aber werde ich auch das nächste Mal gerne den KVV in Anspruch nehmen.

Fazit: Gestern Abend haben alle Beteiligten gewonnen (und ich meine damit nicht, dass ich umsonst fahren durfte).

Even more freaks in Karlsruhe

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

I just noticed a blog of two people from Karlsruhe who plan a one-year (sic!) trip across the world. I mainly found it as they also use the OSM plugin for Wordpress mentioned two days before. Nice to have the trip visualized directly in a blog posting. They are clever enough to spend christmas on New Zealand, when it is summer there and the inhabitants celebrate their holidays.

Even more panorama pics of Crete

Monday, June 15th, 2009

I have updated the panorama picture of the pass of ambelos and added two more panoramas of the Lassithi plateau to the posting. If that’s not yet enough for you, I have some more panoramas.

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Back from Crete

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

The night was short, as the car wanted to leave Myrtos at 6AM. Travel back went very well. The plane left a couple of minutes earlier, luggage was delivered really fast at Frankfurt/Main airport and there was a train back to Karlsruhe almost immediately.

Back to office tomorrow. I’m curious what cool code my colleagues over at extragroup have written in the meantime. And yes, I will resist to log in remotely to know it today :) .

“I like greek-ish food”

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

I love spending my holidays on greek islands for several reasons. One of them is the excellent traditional food. I appreciate the simplicity and taste of the fresh meat, fish and vegetables. It tastes completely different than the food at greek restaurants in germany. It’s not that the latter ones do a bad job. It’s just the fact that the taste differs.

As tourists, we do wrong anyway. If greek people go to the restaurant, they tend to be a lot of people participating. So a lot of different dishes are put on the table, providing a rich variety of food. As tourists, we often are two people who just order two main dishes and that’s it. So the meals look a bit poor, just providing, for example, some meat and potatoes on the plate. Well, not exactly. If you have good luck, the operator of the restaurant also has a garden where she grows some vegetables. If so, also the main dishes will show some fresh vegetables like tomatoes, paprika, onions and olives.

So here are some pics to wet your appetite. The greeks are masters in preparing very tasty starters. Here’s the “Various Appetizers Plate” of the Mirtos Hotel’s restaurant (which was accompanied by an excellent dark, sweet red wine):

Various Appetizers in Hotel Mirtos

Various Appetizers in Hotel Mirtos

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The Lassithi Plateau on Crete (Updated)

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

The Lassithi plateau is an interesting geoformation. It’s almost a circlar area, completely circumvented by some mountains, up to 2148m in hight like the Δίκτη (Dikti). The plateau itself is about 800m above the sea level. There are only a few passes to enter it. One is the pass of Ambelos, where I took a panorama picture showing (from left to right) the Lassithi plateau south, the pass with some ruins of its windmills and then the sea north of it:

Panorama of the pass of ambelos

Panorama of the pass of ambelos

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Mapping alleys in Ierapetra

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

Today I was doing some mapping in Ierapetra, especially in its ancient quarter. Though I use an excellent GPS receiver, it is very difficult to map all those tiny, non rectangular alleys.

The GPS reception is poor, so you need to cope with zig-zagging position information. The result looks pleasing anyway, and I hope it’s not too far from reality.

Still a lot of work needs to be done, and I did not map the street names due to the lack of a greek input method on the tablet. There are additional keyboard layouts for the N810, but those do not contain a greek layout. Therefore there seems to be another hack to teach the N810 a greek layout, but frankly I was too much of a chicken and didn’t install it.

Strong wind on Crete

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

aeolus1.jpg

(Image: Wikipedia, Public domain)

There’s a strong cool wind these days in Myrtos. The wind is that strong that you can neither go swimming (well, you can, but I guess it’s not much fun) nor read a book outside. Even the lid of the notebook will not resist. So I spend a lot of time cruising around the island and visiting various places. Of course this triggers some mapping work as an absolutely unwanted side-effect :) .

I remember a similar wind being present for almost two weeks on Samos and hope it will not last that long.

Traveling to Myrtos, Crete

Sunday, May 31st, 2009
Panorama of Myrtos, Crete, 2009

Panorama of Myrtos, Crete, 2009

It’s the third consecutive year I visit Myrtos, Crete. It’s one of the southmost villages of europe with an almost tropical climate, where the swallows don’t leave towards africa during the winter months. It’s a quiet village with no clubs or big hotels. A small gravelled but nice beach and the usual infrastructure of cafes and restaurants make it the right place for some relaxing days. It’s sited at a primary road, so it’s easy to visit several locations in the east and north of Crete by car.

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Reit- und Wanderkarte

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

If you still think we cannot create cool 3D maps from our 2D data, see the Reit- und Wanderkarte. Though openstreetmap still lacks a consistent icon set, the map looks really great. I hope I can include the tiles in MaemoMapper on my N810 :) .

reitundwanderkartenop.png

Auschwitz-Birkenau Panorama

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

Here’s a panorama picture I took in Auschwitz-Birkenau. It’s far from being perfect, as I only used the automatisms of Hugin without further interaction or editing. The camera position was approximately here, with camera movement from east over south to west (left to right):

auschwitz-birkenau-panorama.jpg

I took the images in auto mode, thus the variant exposures. I should have used the stitch assistant instead.

Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

The Birkenau extermination camp (aka Auschwitz II) was built a couple of months later than Auschwitz I. Both are sited in the delta between the rivers Soła and Wisła. The area is completely flat. An information board provides details about the camp’s site (sorry for the snow flakes). The planned area on the right hand side was never completed, due to the end of the second world war:

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Concentration Camp Auschwitz I

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

On the first day of my stay in Oświęcim, I visited the concentration camp Auschwitz I. Though it is wee small compared to the later built mass termination camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the main camp remained the administrative center of all Auschwitz camps for the five years the Auschwitz camps existed.

To get into the camp just cross the main entrance building. After a few meters, there’s the zynical »Arbeit macht frei« (»labour liberates«) gate to the camp’s entrance on the right hand side:

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Visiting Oświęcim, Poland

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

I’m just back from a visit to the extermination camps in Oświęcim. I wanted to do this trip for several years now, but the Xmas holidays usually have been to short to do all my familiy duties and such a trip. As I got some additional days off this year, it was the perfect occasion. This post will provide some general travel information. Other posts will share information about the camps themselves. (more…)

Picture of the day

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

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