Ich bin ein Berliner. Depending on whom you ask, this could translate to mean "I am from Berlin," or "I am a jelly doughnut." Caching in Germany can, if you let it, become the true meaning of lost in translation. Last year I stumbled upon geocaching quite by accident while doing some research on Global Positioning Systems for work.

I am an active duty U.S. Air Force member stationed with my family in Germany, and deal with GPS systems as part of my job. The geocaching site immediately piqued my interest and after just a few minutes I was firing up a GPSr to get my location. I quickly punched my coordinates into geocaching.com and within a few seconds, I was staring at no less than forty caches within fifteen miles of me! It was at that moment I knew I had to find them all! I could hardly wait for the weekend to find our first cache.

We live near the beautiful Palatinate Forest. A wonderful place filled with old castles and mysterious ruins that have been around for thousands of years; in my opinion the perfect place for caching. Up to the point we discovered geocaching, we had not seen a whole lot of the country. We drove around a lot, but we mainly traveled to other military bases nearby because they were safe and familiar to us.

Geocaching gave us an excuse to venture out and see parts of Germany that I'm sure most Germans don't even know are there! At first, we feared having a hard time finding any caches due to the language barrier, but soon realized that, due to the area being home to one of the largest military communities in Europe, most of the local caching population have English translations on their cache pages. The military has been here for years and many of the locals can either speak the English language or understand enough to get by. It's only when you venture out to the smaller villages that you may run into non-English speakers. With a local map, cache page print out, and a little help from Google's language translator, we have been able to complete caches written completely in German...and all without having to know the metric system!

Not long after we started finding caches, we decided it was time to hide our own, the Pilzhügel Cache. There is a little wooded area right outside the base on which we live that we determined to be perfect for our first cache. There are many trails in and around the woods and plenty of wildlife to see, including deer, foxes and rabbits.

We decided on a two stage multi that would direct the seeker past an old cemetery and down into the woods where they had to find a micro. Once that was located, the new coordinates would lead the cacher further down in the woods via a misty footpath, past old pines and moss covered rocks, and eventually into a fairy-like setting of toadstool mushrooms and ferns where they would search for the main cache.

Our cache page is written completely in English and so far we have had nothing but positive feedback about the cache and its location from both Germans and Americans alike.

Soon, my Monday morning cache-stories-over-coffee began to interest a couple of my co-workers. I told them about our adventures trying to find Froschkönig (The Frog Prince), a cache based on a fairy tale about a princely frog that we had to return to multiple times before we found it. I told them about the trip to Mary Shelley's Schloss, the castle upon which Frankenstein is based, Arkanum XII - Der Gehängte, a cache at the only preserved triple gallows in Germany, and many more.

It wasn't too long after when richsnaders signed up and started sharing his stories with me. He then placed his own cache, Sandman's First, that the kids and I tried to be FTF at...but weren't. My boss even had me incorporate geocaching into a training program I put together to teach co-workers about using GPS receivers and their alternate applications. We spent the day hunting one of our local caches and now do it on a regular basis.

I've got a great job! Not too long ago, a couple of other co-workers, CrazySlim and jandtj joined in on the fun. We even found time to do a few caches while working in Berlin recently. This was our first experience with urban caching and it proved to be more of a challenge than we expected. The caches in our local area usually don't involve homeless people, graffiti, or busy downtown intersections!

In comparison, I just got back from Madison, Alabama where I found a few stateside caches. It was the total opposite of caching in Germany. On the way, I had a long layover in Dallas so I decided to hop online and research the caches near the hotel at which I would be staying in Alabama. I didn't get to my hotel until late and was too tired to do any caching until I got some sleep.

The next morning when I got back online, I saw there was a cache less than two miles away that just had a Yellow Jeep TB placed in it! I have yet to see one of these elusive TBs make it across the pond, so I grabbed my eTrex and bag of swag, hopped in the rental and off I went. I figured, how hard could it be, everything's in English!

The Rainbow Mtn Cache initially proved tougher than I expected. I didn't have a good map, nor did I have a clue where I was going, the two things I had going for me in Germany. I found myself slowly driving up and down streets near the coordinates, ending up in more dead end cul-de-sacs than I care to remember. I eventually stopped and asked a nice couple working in their yard if they knew of the place for which I was looking. We ended up talking about geocaching, and thirty minutes later, I was off again. They ended up giving me directions to the exact place I needed to go! I could never have done that in Germany. The other caches I did were pretty much uneventful.

We have had a wonderful assignment in Germany and could not have asked for a better place to be for caching. Geocaching has helped us experience this assignment in ways we never would have imagined. It has allowed our family to get out and enjoy Germany and its culture, seeing its obvious, as well as hidden, wonders. We have visited ancient waterfalls, windmills, medieval castles, and WWII remnants. It just took us a little longer to venture out.

If we could offer one bit of advice to anyone who wants to try caching in a foreign country, it would be this; don't wait. Get out there and do it! At least you know when it comes to geocaching, we all speak the same language!

-Viel Spaß bei der Suche!