YAPC::Europe advice

[Nicholas Clark]

Free advice that might be useful to anyone going to Frankfurt, or might
just be annoying:

1) If you have Euro small change, look it out and take it.

   When I was visiting in October last year, it really wasn't obvious whether
   any ticket machines at the airport would accept credit cards.*

   Machines with card slots often only take EC cards, which everyone in
   Germany seems surprised don't exist outside of Germany. Meanwhile,
   credit card penetration in Germany is low.

   In 2011 the machines at the main station *did* take credit cards, but
   they seemed to be the exception.

2) Frankfurt has Apfelwein. It's often available in large jugs, from which
   you refill a small glass, traditionally with a diamond pattern on it
   (That's what the rightmost icon on the t-shirts is - an Apfelwein glass)

   Generally it's more "Old Rosie" than "Aspells". So it can be a bit fun
   drinking it in large quantities.

Nicholas Clark

* In 2008 we had massive fun in Mainz (the far end of the line from the
  airport), trying to find a machine that would sell the right kind of
  tickets and accept the size of banknote that the cash machine had just
  dealt out. I forgot to blog about it at the time, but it was an epic farce
  lasting something like 10 minutes. And no, the small value tickets we needed
  were not available for sale using a credit card. Or from the human staff
  at the long distance ticket window, who did have change.