[Noisebridge-congress] General travel plans, questions.

[Andy Isaacson]

On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 06:00:52PM -0700, Rubin Abdi wrote:
> * How much should I plan on spending daily, if I can find couches to 
> crash on?

This depends on where you are and how you plan to live.  You can survive
in Berlin on 5EUR but it wouldn't be very comfortable or fun, and you
might have to pull the "I am a tourist what is this "train ticket" of
which you speak" game more often than you'd like.  For a more normal
existence plan on spending about as much as you do in SF, but in EUR
rather than $.  When I was there last the exchange was 1EUR = $1.20,
it's much worse now, so plan on some pain.  Coffee is 1.5EUR, latte is
3EUR, great falafel is 5EUR, a liter of fruit juice at the grocery is
3EUR, a sit-down vegan meal at Yellow Sunshine is 15EUR with a drink:
http://www.yellow-sunshine.com/speisekarte.html

The U-Bahn is a Proof of Payment system, I saw one dude get hassled when
I was there but mostly it's honor system -- though you do have the
disadvantage of possibly looking Turkish to an unobservant transit cop.
Have weird hair and speak American and have an old ticket and act
confused and you'll probably be fine skipping fares, but the fine is
pretty hefty if they decide to ding you.

> * How much should I plan on spending on the trains there?

Deutsche Bahn has a great English website with pricing info at
www.bahn.de, I believe you may get better offers if you find a German
proxy to go through.

> * Does this plan sound like something interesting?
> * Are you interested on coming along?

Very interesting.  I'll be in Berlin and Europe for a good overlap with
your trip, so I'll see you there.

-andy