Freesteel Blog » Berlin OKCON 2011 trip

Berlin OKCON 2011 trip

Friday, July 15th, 2011 at 6:53 am Written by:

Went to Berlin for the last week of June to OKCON 2011 to give a ScraperWiki talk about how it can solve all your open data conversion needs.

Foolishly, I took the hard seat option on the train from Cologne to Berlin, which was a harsh night. I was unable to upgrade it on the way back, so faced another night in a bolt upright seat in a six person cabin next to some chinese women telling me to put my shoes back on because my feet were too smelly. Smelly feet is a sign of discomfort, and with just about every other part of the body in uproar by 3 o’clock in the morning, so the shoes were coming off inevitably. At my age I’ve lost my youthful flexibility so every contorted posture in a seat attempting to get my head down on its side results in ligaments and joints setting like dry wood ready to snap when I try to bend them back.

At 6am in Cologne train station I got surrounded by police who wanted to see my passport — as they explained — for no reason whatsoever.

I hired bikes for me and Nicola on Wednesday in the middle of the week to tour round Berlin on a scorchingly sunny day as a break from too many days programming.

The city sparrows were greedy.

They were clearing out one particular tray from the bird cage in Berlin Zoo.

At least we got our lunch too.

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <strong>