What is the most comfortable way to get from Frankfurt to ApacheCon EU in Amsterdam? The plane takes you there in one hour but the whole trip takes you around 3 hours from city center to city center. It involves riding local trains, walking around at the airports, carrying luggage, and generally a lot of annoying queuing and waiting. The net time left for doing something productive, which of course can only be coding, what else, is reduced to 20 minutes or so. What a waste of time!

So when I will head for ApacheCon EU in a few weeks, I will board an ICE train at Frankfurt Central, plug in my laptop into the power plug (there is one for every two seats), put on my headphones and start coding away. Exactly four hours and hopefully many unit tests and bug fixes later my private Hackathon ends at Amsterdam Centraal and I am warmed up for the real ASF Hackathon.

The two to four hour distance is perfect for taking the train. It's comfortable, easily accessible, secure, flexible and fast. And the train is perfect for coding. The majority of development for Apache Vysper was done on ICE trains, same for the Spring adoption of Apache James.

By the way. If you can spare two extra hours and want some really nice views on your way between Frankfurt and Amsterdam, then go at 120 km/h, instead of 300, and take the 'old' route through the middle rhine valley with its picturesque villages, old castles, vineyards and mysterious Loreley. On this route you have to change trains at Cologne. Then you either face some unit tests and bugs or dream of maidens for the rest of the trip.