Railscamp Poland 2011, a Roadtrip and Nick Sutterer going Web 2.0

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When “Michał”:http://mlomnicki.com/ pinged me about the upcoming “Railscamp 2011”:http://railscamp.pl in Wisła in the polish mountains it was a matter of minutes until I signed up and registered for this awesome event. *The polish Ruby community is amazing*, so I knew we will have good times there.

We met in Krakow one day beforehand, had yummy beers the whole day and crashed at a nice place, the “Moon Hostel”:http://moonhostel.pl/krakow/ I can really recommend.

The next day we headed to Wisła in Michał’s nice german VW and after a 4 hours ride, delicious drinks, Bad Religion “30 Years Live” on the stereo and several pee breaks he could finally join me drinking. Michał insisted on me having beers during the whole ride so I was in a good mood already 😉

h3. Meet the Crew

The Railscamp was taking place in a cool “forest hotel” 10 minutes footwalk outside of Wisła. It had about 20 four-bed rooms, and a couple of bigger rooms for hanging out. The “Cells & Apotomo Gems”:https://github.com/apotonick/cells Team (that’s us) sponsored a couple of beer boxes, we just put them in front of the hotel and welcomed all incoming nerds with fresh beer.

This was absolutely cool since I met a lot of Ruby folks I knew from earlier events or from the internets, like Pawel, “Bumi”:http://railslove.com/ or “Andrzej”:http://andrzejonsoftware.blogspot.com/.

Finally, about 60 Rubyists from Poland, Germany and even from England (Yay!) had arrived, everybody had dinner, everybody was drinking constantly. Being good nerds, the beautiful waitress girls who served us were being watched permanently.

I can’t remember if we did any tech talk this night. I talked to great people, listened to music, we had drinks the whole night and we all could feel the Ruby love.

Yeah, there was love.

Ruby programmers are not afraid of showing friendship. A kiss on your cheek is considered pleasant, especially when your name is Bastek.

Late at night and quite drunk we went to bed. The comfy beds made us sleep very well.

h3. On a Saturday nite…

The next morning, Michał, Schorsch and I had a walk into the city to get some food and coffee. It wasn’t raining, but cloudy and a chilly wind was blowing from the north. Talking about gems, hangover and polish girls we found a nice place for coffee.

We spent the rest of the day with playing soccer in front of the hotel (where the beer boxes sat). Before dinner, I had the chance to rant about Rails and REST – finally!

Dinner was happening outside at the barbeque place and that was indeed amazing. Great BBQ food, burgers, wine and beer, good chats. Suddenly, the party started again and people got crazy.

After José played some songs on his acoustic guitar Bastek and I conquered the stereo. It didn’t take long and 20 nerds were dancing, urging the three or four girls to participate in such a thrilling event.

Polish people are great. Everytime I go to Poland, I instantly feel the sincere hospitality that makes me wanna stay there!

Ela and Agata were amazed that german boys started the dance.

It was an awesome funny night. Especially when Bumi started handing vodkas to random people for at least an hour the dancefloor turned into burning hell.

The party lasted at least till four. Some folks prefered strange sleeping places. I mean, we had warm beds, so why would I wanna crash on the toilet seat???

Finally, we got to sleep.

h3. Sunday – No depression!

I got the chance to catch a ride with people from Krakow on monday morning so we spent the sunday night at the hotel watching movies, drinking and talking BS. Since we had to get up very early, four of us decided to make a night of it.

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I will never forget “Julian from the UK”:https://twitter.com/juliancheal, seven in the morning, sitting at the breakfast table: “Guten Morgen, drei Bier bitte.” where he ordered three other beers in perfect german.

h3. Tell me why I like Mondays

The nice guys from “Applicake”:http://applicake.com/ took Julian and me to Krakow, made me sleep on their office couch and even gave me food and coffee. They’re awesome.

I got invited to stay at Ela+Bart’s place for the night. Agata came over and we had a delicious dinner at the mediterranean yoga table in their appartment. Laughing fit included.

Bart was so generous and gave me a free pair of socks since I ran out of clean stuff. Thanks Bart, I still wear them with pride!

h3. Tuesday and going back home

The next morning I had to “deliver a quick talk”:http://applicake.com/blog/index.php/2011/04/11/nick-sutterer-and-divide-and-conquer-%E2%80%93-view-components-in-rails-come-over-for-the-talk-and-coffee-tomorrow-tue-at-830-am/ about my gems “Cells and Apotomo”:http://apotomo.de at the Applicake office. After another delicious coffee and saying goodbye to all my polish friends in Krakow Agata took me to the train station and I headed off to the airport.

It was a fantastic “weekend” in Poland and I will definitely keep coming back there! Polish people even made me going Web 2.0 (“That’s so nineties…!”) and sign up at “twitter”:http://twitter.com/apotonick, flickr and facebook! I’m mainstream now!

*Beautiful Poland!*

Here are “more pictures”:http://www.flickr.com/groups/railscamp_pl/.
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