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It's almost time for Munich!

Submitted by Brock on Sun 5 Aug 2012, 9:00 pm

Holy crap, can you believe that DrupalCon Munich is just two weeks away? This summer has been flying by!

I, for one, am equal parts excited and apprehensive. DrupalCons are always exciting: I get to see friends I've made over the last couple years, and always meet a ton of new people. But, at the same time, I'm a little bit worried about two things: finding my way around, and being on a panel.

I really shouldn't be nervous about the panel. I'll be speaking with Karyn Cassio, Addi Berry, and Paul Johnson about making local meetups work, in the last session slot on Wednesday. All three of them are easy to talk to, and we've got a ton of information and ideas to share.

Getting around should be…ok. I did take a year of German in college, so I know some basics, but not enough to understand the answer to any question that I might manage to ask. I know that a lot of people speak English, and I'm banking on that more than anything else. This afternoon, I finally took a close look at the (very intimidating) map of the train network, and the part I need to navigate will be pretty straightforward. The map looked way more confusing when I just gave it a once-over before, because the station names are hard to differentiate when you don't know what most of them mean.

Getting from the airport to the Westin Grand will be fine, but at the end of the week, I need to make my way closer to the middle of the city to meet my wife at the hotel whe're we'll be spending that weekend—and she needs to find her way there from the airport, without even the cursory understanding of German that I've got. Without cell phones, it will be hard to get in touch to coordinate or warn about delays. I've been trying to figure out the situation with cell phones in Germany, and I think we might be best served by a couple cheap pre-paid voice-only units, instead of trying to get an actual data plan on our iPhones.

So yes: it's all very exciting and just a little bit terrifying, but I can't wait to see everyone in Munich!

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Comments

Christoph Weber (not verified)

Mon 6 Aug 2012, 2:38 pm

We opted for cheap prepaid cell phones in neighboring Switzerland in 2010, because making iPhones work without breaking the bank was out of the question. It was simple, easy and worked well.

As to trains: You'll find it is much easier than it looks. Figure out departure station and destination station. Get your tickets, get on the train, and watch station signs as you approach. Most people speak passable English, so you won't feel completely lost.

mradcliffe (not verified)

Tue 7 Aug 2012, 1:52 pm

I mentioned this in Irc to someone the other day but I was planning on buying a sim and cheap phone from gosim.com. Then potentially be able to use it in Asia as well as Europe. Tried looking into unlocking my iPhone but I dot have the correct baseband version. It really does seem like too much of a hassle like Christoph mentioned.

Brock

Tue 7 Aug 2012, 5:25 pm

We've got an old iPhone 3G kicking around here somewhere; I wonder if that would work with one of those SIMs. I've never paid much attention to the various types of cell networks so I have no idea if it would be compatible.

Kat (not verified)

Tue 14 Aug 2012, 7:45 am

Most people in Germany (at least cities like Munich) are really great at English. I've gone to Munich and Berlin, and both times I was trying to get people to speak German with me, but at my accent they'd just switch to English automatically. You'll be just fine. :)

Have a great time, and take lots of pictures for the rest of us!

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