Deeper insights

Bicycle tours in the Rhein-Neckar-Kreis district generally offer beautiful views. The Weitersehen app, however, provides insights that go beyond what you can see in the environment. The invisible becomes visible and the past comes alive by means of augmented reality offering an enhanced experience of history. Sabre-toothed tigers and mushrooms as tall as trees may turn up by the wayside then.

Annina Lucke walks along the forest path looking at the tablet that she holds in her hands. She passes huge, old tree trunks that lie criss-cross on top of each other, overgrown with shrubs, young trees and moss. The deadwood garden installed in the Schwetzinger Hardt forest reserve provides a home for rare plant and animal species such as the Haarzungen-Faulholzkäfer beetle or the olive-green Braunsporrindenpilz fungus, both highly endangered.

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But you can’t see them among all the trees. Annina turns round looking a little lost for a moment. Then she finds what she’s looking for. “Ah, here is the portal.” She looks at her tablet and takes a large step forward, looking around in amazement. Now she stands in a forest of tree-high mushrooms. A huge stag beetle crawls on the left and a jewel beetle a bit further away. The scene is reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. The Latin names of the plants and animals appear as well, just in case you don’t know which of the many mushrooms is the olive-green Braunsporrindenpilz fungus; at least if you look at a tablet and open the Weitersehen app, like Annina does.

The deadwood garden near Walldorf is one of the stops along the Ur-Rhein Route (primeval Rhine route) tour that you can choose from in the app and that Annina helped develop. She is responsible for the project at the Rhein-Neckar-Kreis district office. It took two years to collect and coordinate the information from twelve different municipalities, plan the routes and develop the app. “The project is also meant to be a pilot project to answer the question of how districts, cities and municipalities can use augmented reality and what opportunities it offers,” she explains. She is particularly proud of the deadwood garden stop. “There’s something very imaginative about it, as if viewers are entering a world through the app that would normally remain hidden from them and at the same time they are being given a lot of knowledge.”

The district has planned two loop cycle tours with the Weitersehen app: the Ur-Neckar-Route route, which covers a challenging 37 kilometres via Neckargemünd, Bammental, Meckesheim and Wiesenbach; and the 52-kilometre Ur-Rhein-Route route with family-friendly passages and stops in Schwetzingen, Sandhausen, Hockenheim and Ketsch. There is a total of 17 stops—at the moment. “We can expand the app at any time if we find out more exciting stories about a place,” Annina says. And this is exactly what the app does. It takes on the role of a virtual travel guide and tells stories. About how much life is hidden in apparently dead trees, for example. Or about which animals used to live in the Rhine Neckar Metropolitan Region. Or what the castle below the grass sod is all about.

The app is available in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store for free. “It’s a good idea to launch the app before starting the tour and download the content at home. This saves mobile data and long loading times at the stops,” explains Annina. The tour itself leads down familiar cycle paths. “All you have to do is follow the Weitersehen logo that shows a magnifying glass on the cycle signposts in the region.” Navigation via the komoot route planner app also works.

Even people who live directly at the stops learn new things about their place of residence through the Weitersehen app

Annina Lucke

The magnifiers signposting the Ur-Rhein Route guide Annina from the deadwood garden out of the forest and across the fields to Reilingen. Just outside the municipality of Reilingen are the ruins of Wersau fortress. It is also known as the fortress beneath the grass sod, “because it wasn’t clear what was hidden beneath the meadow there for a long time,” explains Benny Schaich-Lebek from the Wersau fortress support association. The municipality initially planned a new development area on the site. They assumed that nothing was left of the medieval fortress that had stood here. But geophysical measurements revealed that there still were remains of the wall below the grass sod.

The department at Heidelberg University that deals with prehistory and early history has been conducting targeted research on the site since 2012—with the help of many volunteers working on the excavation site every Saturday under the guidance of students of the department. “Anyone can join in and help dig as an amateur archaeologist or clean and sort finds,” says Benny, and thus help gradually pull the history of the fortress and its size and significance for the region out of oblivion.

He leads us into a tent in which boxes with artefacts are piled high—mainly shards of jugs, bowls and cups. “If you fancy demonstrating patience, you can even try to put them back together again,” says Benny, showing a jug that has been half reassembled. The artefacts have inspired Annina to create a game; a game that cyclists can play even when the gate to the excavation site is closed. She goes to the display board on the left in front of the gate, opens the app on her tablet and scans the QR code displayed on it. Sophia appears on the display. It looks as if she is standing right in front of the gate. The virtual researcher introduces the respective topic at each stop on the route. You can then choose from photo galleries, videos, interactive games and animations explaining more about the topic, “depending on how much you want to engage with it,” she Annina. Here at Wersau fortress, a game takes you to the centre of the ruins via a 3D model. Annina moves carefully through the virtual archaeological site, guided by the app. The task is to collect the shards hidden here. “Got one,” she says triumphantly and clicks on the discovered artefact.

Annina is clearly enjoying trying out her own project. “When I saw the job advert, I applied straight away,” she remembers. She comes from the Allgäu region and studied tourism management. “But I’ve always been passionate about new technologies as well.” That’s why she decided to study for a master’s degree in Innovation Management at Ludwigshafen University of Applied Sciences and focussed on virtual and augmented reality. “I knew that I could combine both passions, tourism and technology, in the position as project manager for the Weitersehen project.”

The app also focuses on the natural changes that occur in the landscape. Therefore, the routes follow the original courses of the Rhine and Neckar rivers. But it also explains how humans intervene in the environment and how they live off it. The straightening of the Rhine is just as much a topic as the cultivation of asparagus, hops and tobacco in the region. “I’ve learnt so much about my new home through working on the app,” says Annina. The app picks up on well-known history, but it also presents numerous places that previously tended to be off the beaten tourist track. Annina is certain that “even people who live directly at the stops learn new things about their place of residence through the Weitersehen app.” And gain deeper insights.

www.deinefreizeit.com/weitersehen-app