Wikimedia Hackathon 2018/Venue and Barcelona

Be patient, will update it in some days

Venue
The event will take place at the Engineering Faculty of the Autonomous University of Barcelona also known as UAB. Amical Wikimedia organises this event in a Faculty and not in Barcelona city center as part of an ongoing partnership with this University, which happens to celebrate its 50th anniversary during 2018. The UAB has 88 bachelor's degrees, 133 official master's. It's a community based on 26k undergraduates, 3k master's students, 5k PhdDstudents. Here you can have a general scope on the University. Since 2011, the UAB has been partnering in #eduwiki projects with Amical Wikimedia. You need to know that the campus is out of the city, so we will have calm to focus on our hacking. Hotels are NOT in the same building of the hackathon rooms, but there will be shuttles available during the whole weekend connecting the venues, and a lot of volunteers helping you on the go.

Hackathon rooms
Map with hackathon spaces is yet to be done, but here you have some pics of the classrooms and interior spaces of the buildings

Accomodation
As the event takes place in a University Campus, accomodation will take place in two near hotels. A shuttle bus service will be available among venues and hotel. More info about it soon.

Food and drinks at the venue
This is an educational area, so by law high alcoholics drinks are forbidden. Softdrinks like wine and beer are allowed. Smoking is forbidden inside the buildings and eating areas.

Parking
Free Parking available just in front of the main building. Private parking also inside the building.

Within a 500 metres radius
We are in a campus, no shops or facilities in near radius. Make sure you bring your plugs, tobbaco, or other facilities with you.

By plane
The main airport is Barcelona El Prat (BCN). Some low-cost carriers, notably Ryanair, use the airports of Girona (GRO), nearly 100 km to the north, or Reus (REU), around the same distance to the south, instead. Since Ryanair started operating at BCN, you should check carefully where your flight goes. The three letter IATA code should be part of your booking process and at the very least it will be printed onto your luggage tag.

Barcelona International Airport
Barcelona International Airport (BCN), also known as El Prat, is a major transport hub, with flights from all over Europe and beyond.

Girona–Costa Brava Airport
The Barcelona Bus service runs a shuttle bus from Estació del Nord (which is walking distance to the Arc de Triomf metro stop) in Barcelona to Girona Airport, synchronized with various flight times. A one-way ticket costs €16 and a return ticket costs €25. The journey takes approximately one hour and ten minutes. Timetables are available online.

Reus Airport
The easiest way is to get there is to take the bus run by Hispano Igualadina from the Barcelona Sants bus station to the airport. Bus departures are synchronized with Ryanair plane departures/arrivals. One way ticket costs €13 and a return ticket costs €24. The journey takes from 1 hr 30 min to 1 hr 45 min, depending on the traffic on the motorway. Timetables are available [http://www.igualadina.com/pdfs/REUS%20AIRPORT.pdf? online]. A slightly cheaper, yet longer option is to take a train from Barcelona Sants station to Reus and then the local bus no. 50 to the airport. The train costs €7.25 and then the bus costs €2.5. This takes roughly about two and a half hours. Train timetables can be checked at Renfe's website and the bus timetable is available at the website of Reus public transport.



By train


Barcelona is well-connected to the Spanish railway network, and to the rest of Europe. High-speed trains run frequently from Sants station (in the southwest of the city) to Madrid, Seville and Malaga. In addition, there are regular long-distance connections that partially use high-speed infrastructure to all major Spanish cities.

The main station is Barcelona-Sants. The historic Estació de França now mostly serves regional trains.

Direct regular high-speed train service goes to destinations in France. In addition to two daily TGV services from Paris (travel time ~7 hr to Barcelona), there is a daily service from Toulouse (3 hr), a daily service from Lyon (5 hr), and a daily service from Marseille (4 hr). Prices start at €39, so even though the train could take longer than a flight, it is often a cheaper and more relaxed alternative.

The former Talgo trains from Montpellier to Barcelona and Cartagena via Portbou ceased to run when direct high speed services started. It is still possible to travel via Cerbère/Portbou using local trains, but it's cumbersome, painfully slow and timetable coordination at the border is awful; however it may be the only alternative if all TGVs are fully booked. Also, if booked in advance, TGV can be way cheaper than using these local trains.

There is also a less-known rail line over the Pyrenees to Toulouse. There is roughly one train every 3 hours on the Spanish side and one every two or four on the French side, including an sleeper train from Paris (with a branch to Portbou which splits at Toulouse: check all timetables to see whether route is faster, it greatly depends on waiting times at the border). Purchasing tickets for this route can be tricky. The Spanish line is considered a commuter line despite being far away from Barcelona and does not appear in any global European timetable, so it is impossible to get an international CIV ticket, every portion must be purchased separately. Also, for southbound travel, the Latour-de-Carol station only sells SNCF tickets so the Spanish portion must be bought directly at the ticket inspector, cash only. The journey takes 7–8 hours (including transfer) and costs roughly €30.

The launch of the high-speed service spelled the end of the overnight sleeper-car service called Trenhotel between Barcelona and Paris. Trenhotels still do, however, run between Barcelona and Granada, A Coruña and Vigo.



By boat
The city's port is one of the busiest on the Mediterranean.

Large cruise ships dock 1-2 km to the southwest. Many of them offer bus-shuttles to locations at the south end of La Rambla. The ferries dock almost directly on the Ramblas.

There are regular ferry connections with the Balearic Islands, Italy (Savona, Genoa, Livorno, Porto Torres and Civitavecchia for Rome) and Tangier, in Morocco. From Rome (Civitavecchia) it is actually cheaper to take the ferry than a bus.

Some of the largest shipping companies includes Baleària, Grimaldi Lines and Trasmediterranea but there are several smaller companies as well.

By bus
All bus connections are at marker|type=listing | url=https://www.barcelonanord.cat/en/home/ | name=Barcelona Nord station (phone: +34 902 260 606). This includes national (e.g. 18 buses per day from Madrid) and international routes.

Megabus runs coach services between Barcelona Estació del Nord and London Victoria Coach Station, via Paris and Toulouse. They also connect to Amsterdam, Cologne, Brussels and many UK cities. They can be very cheap, but be prepared for a 24-26 hour coach ride from London! Also note the 50p booking fee. There may or may not be plug sockets or wifi on board. One customer's experience on a megabus from London to Paris is that there was slow wifi while in the UK, and it didn't work at all in France. There were plug sockets but they didn't work on either the outward or return journey - the driver saying that there was an electrical fault which they weren't qualified to fix. Megabus recommend that you be at your departure point at least 30 minutes before departure time (except London Victoria where you are required to arrive 60 minutes before departure).

By car
Several main roads connect Barcelona to France and to the rest of Spain. Traffic is usually relatively light outside of peak hours. Free parking spaces can be found a few metro stops from the center of the city.

Blue parking spaces are paid between 09:00-14:00 and 16:00-20:00, Monday to Saturday. At some crossroads, the pay time starts at 08:00. Anyone can use a blue space, but they aren't that easy to find. You pay at the meter and put the ticket on the dashboard. Green parking spaces are for residents only. White parking spaces are free at all times, but there aren't any in the city centre.

City car parks are located throughout the city.

General tourist information
Barcelona has a population of nearly two million people. It has a wide variety of attractions that bring in tourists from across the globe. The many faces of Barcelona include the medieval Old Town, and the unique street grid resulting from 19th-century urban planning. The city has long sandy beaches and green parks on the hills, pretty much side-by-side. It is also famous for a number of prominent buildings, of which the most-known are by the architect Antoni Gaudí, including his Sagrada Família, which became Barcelona's symbol to many.

Founded more than 2,000 years ago as the ancient Roman town Barcino, Barcelona is thus as historic as it is modern, with a constant flow of projects changing the face of the city and long-standing penchant for design and innovation. Thanks to the wealth of attractions, a very well-developed accommodation base, a lively nightlife and a robust transportation system, Barcelona has become one of Europe's, and pretty much the world's, most popular tourist destinations.

Contact: hackathon@wikimedia.cat This e-mail address can be used for all inquiries or questions regarding the event.