Pokémon GO and the whole Pokémon theme was never really interesting for Jürgen. He only downloaded the Pokémon GO app for research purposes and didn’t use it much due to a poor data connection in his hometown. But then came a fateful trip to Pforzheim and changed everything!
On July 12th, it was officially time and I came into contact with Pokémon GO. By necessity, because my boss wanted me to write news about it, after all, the topic was currently the Mega-Hype. “Okay,” I thought and informed myself thoroughly about the game. But somehow I couldn’t really imagine that it was supposed to be fun. Catching silly creatures with your phone that you see sitting on some funny images and tweets on toilet bowls and manhole covers? And also go outside? Seriously?! Gaming has always been a great fun for me because I didn’t have to go outside where it was cold, hot, or wet.
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Welcome to the Poké-Newland!
However, I am also quite a perfectionist and very unwilling to write news about games I’ve never played. So the next day, I downloaded Pokémon GO and tried it out. The first starter Pokémon was not much of a problem, but unfortunately, I live in a small Swabian village south of Pforzheim. There were indeed two Poké Stops (village fountain and church), but since the mobile data connection here is very modest, I couldn’t use the points.
And there were also no new Pokémon to be seen back then; there was rustling everywhere in the virtual bushes, but somehow nothing ever came out, and I couldn’t go further from the house because then the Wi-Fi would be gone. “What a waste!” I thought to myself and forgot the app again. At least I had played around with it and could somewhat participate in conversations and write better articles about it.
New Hunting Grounds
Still, the topic was not off the table and even my girlfriend – who works as a teacher and has little to do with games – recently said, “At my school, they looked for a Pokémon in the bathroom and I supposedly had one on my shoulder the whole time!”. Yes, there must be something to it, but what to do if I can’t find anything here in the village?
But then yesterday came the perfect opportunity to get to know the game better. My girlfriend had arranged to meet two friends in Pforzheim for a small summer festival in the castle garden. “Hmm, Pforzheim, a city with a functioning data connection, where there are surely plenty of Pokémon species and Poké Stops.” I thought and off I went!
They are everywhere!
Soon I was in Pforzheim in the castle park, and indeed, everything was full of Poké Stops and there were footprints and mysterious creatures rustling in the virtual foliage everywhere. What could be hiding there? Since my girlfriend was still looking for a parking space, I went a bit hunting and was able to snag a Poké Stop at the “Luther Oak.” In the process, I also learned some cool facts about the tree, which was planted in the 19th century to celebrate the Reformation. Cool!
Unfortunately, the Pokémon hunting didn’t go so well, because somehow the app was completely overloaded, and even though there were plenty of Pokémon around, none ever appeared for me, and the only one I really saw was with a group of teenagers, and I didn’t want to disturb them. At some point, I got lucky and actually encountered a beast. It was a kind of purple Valkyrie with a kiss mouth, a Rossana, as it turned out later.
I’m too old for this shit!
Cool! My first real Pokémon! Suddenly the app switched to AR camera mode and I could throw balls at the creature. But how does that actually work? I threw and threw, and nothing happened. Do I have to hit the Pokémon directly? Or does the ball have to be under the thing? And what’s with this stupid green circle? I wasted dozens of balls, and eventually, I had success, because it went “pop” and the Pokémon was gone. But the ball was right in the camera and didn’t move. Did I catch it or did my silly antics annoy the Pokémon and it escaped?
Nothing was happening anyway, and by now my girlfriend and our other friends had also arrived, and we actually wanted to listen to the bands at the summer festival and drink beer. However, the acoustics in the castle garden were not the best and the bands even less so. It was hardly bearable, and we moved on to the rooftop terrace of a parking garage where a kind of beach bar was set up.
Hey, are you playing Pokémon?
On the way there, I looked at my phone again and apparently the Pokémon app crashed due to a bug, and after a restart, it also turned out that the captured Pokémon wasn’t registered either. Great! Still, I didn’t give up and looked for Pokémon again in the beach bar. My buddy noticed this and wanted to know what I was doing. I explained it to him, and just as I was doing so, the waitress came to bring our beer.
“Hey, you’re playing Pokémon!” she said, and she was already there giving us a few tips. For example, that there were always a few Habitak fluttering at the railing over there, and that various Bisasam were hiding in the basement of the parking garage. My buddy was so impressed that he immediately downloaded the app, and then we went hunting together. And here I could finally catch a Pokémon without the app crashing. When it got dark, I even caught a Zubat. I was very proud!
I have to catch them all!
From then on, I was firmly caught by the Poké fever, and when we later went home and strolled through the pedestrian zone of Pforzheim on the way to the parking lot, I passed by numerous Poké Stops where I could refill my depleted Poké Ball stock. I could have caught several Pokémon that wandered through the streets at night, but my girlfriend wanted to go home and it was already quite cold.
However, I didn’t want to go to bed yet, and as soon as I got home, I went out again and made another raid. Because further back in our new housing development, the mobile data network was indeed better, and I desperately wanted to catch a few more Pokémon. Besides, I had just found out that I could hatch an egg that I had found earlier in Pforzheim if I walked around with it long enough. Very cool!
The Ponita in the neighbor’s garden…
What was supposed to be a short trip turned into a real odyssey through the village, because even if the Pokémon population in the countryside was not the best, there were still enough creatures around, and a particularly magnificent Ponita was laughing at me from a stranger’s garden. I really wanted to have that creature, but I can’t just go into someone else’s property, especially not in the middle of the night, can I? So I crept around the house for ages and tried to somehow bring the Pokémon into camera mode – which probably looked even more suspicious than if I had just trampled on the lawn…
At some point, I got lucky and was able to find and catch the Ponita, and when I finally got home again, it was shortly after 1:00 AM, and I was totally frozen and a little sick, but also happy. And today I can hardly wait to go hunting again and expand my collection. If someone had told me at the beginning of the week that I would be wandering around for hours in the cold and darkness, I would have laughed at him, but now I see a great opportunity in every shopping trip and every trip to the city to really catch them all…
That’s it for my first experiences with Pokémon GO. Have you had anything similar? Or do you not care about the game at all? Let us know in the comments! Additionally, we dedicated the topic “Pokémon – Is it annoying or are you in the fever?” to the section “Mein-MMO asks”. Check it out. You can find more on the topic of Pokémon GO with numerous tips and tricks in our theme collection for Pokémon GO.
