#objcgn

★★★ ALL the #ObjCGN Sessions: 69 € ★★★ that's 23% discount and almost 3 videos for free! http://ObjCGN.com 

★★★ ALL the #ObjCGN Sessions: 69 € ★★★ that's 23% discount and almost 3 videos for free! http://ObjCGN.com 

I arrived in Cologne at around 9am on the Sunday morning before ObjCGN, after catching a fast train from Frankfurt.  The plan was to have plenty of time to get sorted out at the hotel, fight the jetlag a bit and make sure I knew how to get to the conference the next morning.

Getting the train from Frankfurt airport was pretty straighforward.  The intercity trains are upstairs in terminal 1, and the local metro is downstairs.  I did have a bit of a moment trying to work out if I needed to get a separate ticket for the train, but after visiting the Lufthansa ticket office (also upstairs) it turned out I could use the paper ticket I already had, so all good.

Arrival at Köln HBF

The HBF (Hauptbahnhof) is the central station in Cologne. This is next to the cathedral, which is kind of huge.  I only saw the side of it, not realising that the front was around the corner from the HBF.

There are heaps of places to grab breakfast, there's a mini-mall of sorts underneath the platforms.  You can also buy a ticket for the local train network at the HBF, or in the metro station itself.  Make sure you use the right ticket machine, there are two types - yellow for local, red for intercity.  I found that the ones in the HBF were exact change only, and my travel mastercard didn't work in them either.  There are a couple of ATMs under HBF so getting cash wasn't a problem.  There's also a Starbucks where you can bum some internet access, or get a coffee if you are really desperate.  I had to wait about an hour for mine to cool enough to be able to drink it without burning my mouth

Heading out

Train tickets are single trip, or four trip, or you can also get weekly ones.  The '1b' zone covers the Cologne metro area, so that should cover anywhere you need to go.  The local trains are more like trams, and the stops are well sign-posted so it's quite easy to work out where to get off.

The metro stations (U-Bahn) are accessible by going outside (took me a while to realise this - maybe I was more jetlagged than I thought), one on the cathedral side and the other on the  opposite side nearer the river.  These stations are generally marked with a big white U on a blue background.