GerMittens 2013 - No Bandwidth Edition (aftermath)

[cat]

Do we need more cars, Abstauber? I guess your car will be enough to go shopping, right? Otherwise we would have to think about car rental...

[abstauber]

Well, the urban railway station are 5 to 7 km from our place.
We have two cars with four free seats (each) at a time, so it is possible to get us all going - it just takes longer. We also have 10 bikes at the house, even though I don't know if locks are included.

[cat]

I don't mind going 5-7km by bike, I'll remember to bring a lock! Will it be possible we get picked up from the railway station when we arrive on Saturday?

[AGA]

I think CJ might be planning to rent a car.  He'll be leaving before the end though, so getting back into Berlin from Mittensland might be difficult.

[abstauber]

Will it be possible we get picked up from the railway station when we arrive on Saturday?

Of course, just tell me your time of arrival at Friedrichshagen and I'll be there.

@AGA We just need to make all excursions until thursday and recover afterwards

@everyone else: If you haven't supplied you times of arrival, please consider it. It'll save lots of phone costs on Saturday

[Miez]

I will be arriving by Zug at Berlin HBF at 15:08.
Have to look into my connecting train...

[arj0n]

Milieuvignet for the car has been ordered.
I think we're gonna aim to arrive at the villa between 14:00 and 15:00.
We are able to pickup max 2 persons from the 'Berlin Schoenefeld SXF Airport' since it's kinda on our route, so if needed let us know.

[m0ds]

Curious about a couple of things myself:

Spoiler

1) Is there a bus from the local place to Berlin? Google maps doesn't have street view for the town/village with the Mittens place in it. I don't know anything about German busses, but clearly 2 cars won't cut all of us getting around. So if you're able to dig up any info about bus services, it could be useful. Or taxi rates? No worries if not. I'll be happy to just loaf around myself...

2) Are the amenities confirmed? May seem silly to ask but it's happened in the past, you get there, and some of the listed/pictured items are gone, or closed, or not prepared and unusable for the duration. So it'd be great to hear from the renters that the pool is definitely up and running, same for the jacuzzi and sauna, and the bikes. And also WIFI! Is it bloody working and is there signal!!! We always seem to manage a bum deal on wifi. Worth telling them we need this and if it's not working, they'll be getting a lot of phone calls through the week.. It might be worth finding out if there's a "limit" before we arrive (there was a limit in Ireland, which only took one Christopher Walken FMV game to use it all up )

[close]

That's all I have in the way of questions for now... I'm sure you have it all under control Shouldn't be long before I can book my flight. Still tempted to get to Hamburg early and hop in the car with you guys but if not it'll be TXL hopefully around the same time as Snarky (14:00-14:30).

[abstauber]

1) I haven't found out if there's a bus from our place to one of the S-Bahn stations yet. But getting to Berlin main station and back takes about 30 minutes via S-Bahn, so that's the preferred way.

2) I better hope so. The previous tenants leave at 10.am and we get the keys at 15:00 - so they have 5 hours to fix everything the others broke Volume limited internet rates are still quite uncommon in Germany. The biggest carrier recently announced one, but it will be introduced in 2015 so we should be safe. But prosecution of dubious file sharing activities is a problem. Better leave those bit torrent clients at home


Christina and I need about 1 hour to be at the Hamburg Airport and we plan to reach Berlin at 14:00. So everything between 08:00 and 10:30 pm should be fine.

[DoorKnobHandle]

You should be receiving my money in the next couple of days, abstauber, I send it over this morning.

And yeah, can we be sure we will have decent (ie. usable) internet there? Is there a statement/can we check or won't that be necessary? Having no connection there or have it be very limited would suck!

[AGA]

And yeah, can we be sure we will have decent (ie. usable) internet there? Is there a statement/can we check or won't that be necessary? Having no connection there or have it be very limited would suck!

No it wouldn't!  Having Internet at Mittens is by no means expected.  This is a social thing, not a nerding about on computers thing.

Besides, if you're German too, can't you just bring your smartphone and use that to connect if you really have to?

[DoorKnobHandle]

Having internet does not mean abandoning all social aspects! :p Obviously I don't want internet so that everybody is on their laptop or smartphone all day, but it would certainly be useful to show each other projects we're working on, to play and show other people music we like (via youtube) and so on.

EDIT: But yeah, if we can't get internet, it's not such a big deal as my previous post made it sound like. It'll be great fun regardless.

[selmiak]

Of course an internetconnection is needed, otherwise the forums would be totally underpopulated. And don't forget to set up a live webcam and a lifechat into the house

[cat]

Actually, I thought it was great when internet stopped working in Ireland. Suddenly everybody had to stop spending the whole time on facebook and - OMG - talk to other people IRL.

[Miez]

Suddenly everybody had to stop spending the whole time on facebook and - OMG - talk to other people IRL.

Wait ... was that right before we all decided that Irish Carbombs were an 'acceptable beverage'?

[Snarky]

Actually, I thought it was great when internet stopped working in Ireland. Suddenly everybody had to stop spending the whole time on facebook and - OMG - talk to other people IRL.

Hah! Like I need the internet to be antisocial!

[Esseb]

Just booked my flight. Will arrive 12:10 in TXL on the 10th.

Who else is arriving in TXL, and what's the best route from there to the house?

Edit: If the Internet goes down we can print out a stack of empty forum posts we can fill in so that we can still communicate without actually talking to each other.

[m0ds]

Socialize with Berian.............internet..............socialize with Berian.............or internet...............hmmmmmmmmmm.......... tough one that!

[AGA]

Bear in mind that on the Internet I am ALL POWERFUL.  Whereas in person I'm just extremely powerful.

[abstauber]

@Esseb
Without having done the route myself, try this:
1) TXL (Express Bus) to Beusselstr.
2) S41 to Ostkreuz
3) S3 to Friedrichshagen (Direction Erkner)
4) This is as close as you can get, call one of us car owners to get picked up.