After our exhausting drive through the German countryside we decided not to do it again, even if it was during the day. I found a train that would leave at 8:30 and get us to Cologne by 6 for 59eu. We didn’t have internet access, but we did have power at the seats. For the majority of the trip we had 5 people sitting at 2 4 person work tables. We had to move occasionally as seats had been reserved for portions of the trip. Lunch on the train was great too. The view was really beautiful when coming up the Rhine with random castles perched on the bluffs. We’re considering doing this hackers on a train thing again.

Jens picked us up at the train station and took us to C4, Chaos Computer Club Cologne. It has some nice features like a kitchen, show, and it’s next door to a dominatrix studio. Jens and Lars gave an excellent presentation on design patterns for creating a hacker space (check out Bre’s post). I think many of the ideas could be applied to coworking.

Yesterday we went to the cathedral and then drank kolsch style beer. Only breweries within cathedral line-of-sight can legally refer to their beer as kolsch.

That evening we went to Das Labor in Bochum. They’re responsible for creating several LED borg cubes along with several other cool projects.

I head back to the US tomorrow morning.