Navigating through Linkoping with a dead GPS phone

November 24, 2011 | By Rakhitha | Filed in: Me, Myself & I, Tech, Travel.

Well! Yesterday was my 2nd working day in Linkoping with two other guys. When you come from a place like SL, its bit tough to find your way around. All the names of places sounds same. All houses looks same. There are separate roads to drive, walk and ride. Everything is little too systematic (like buses always come on time) :).

We decided to find our way from work place to apartment on foot on our own after work. When we get out of the office it was completely dark and temperature was near zero. We did not have a map with us, but being a long time Google maps user on a GPS enabled phone we were quite confident and did not even bother to ask for directions from anyone.

It was almost impossible to press buttons on mobile with the glows on. To make matters even more complicated, Google decided to make it more interesting. When we searched for walking directions to our destination, Google maps gave directions through major roads on which we are not supposed to walk through or cross. It completely ignored biking and walking paths. We ended up having to look for walking/biking paths parallel to directions given by Google.

Fun part began once we are half way through. It turned out that batteries run out lot faster when exposed to low temperatures. And we found ourself in the middle of no-ware with a dead GPS device at hand. Luckily we figured the general direction we need to walk and finally ended up in a correct neighbourhood.

Never trust google maps when you don’t have an unlimited power supply 🙂


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