8th Max-Planck Advanced Course on the Foundations of Computer Science September 3 - September 7, 2007 Saarbrücken, Germany

Location

Transport

Travelling to Saarbrücken:

You will probably try to reach Saarbrücken by train. If you have a flight to Frankfurt, this is extremely easy. There is a train station right in the terminal building. Trains run frequently. You have to buy a ticket before you board the train, and there you can also ask which trains to take.

If you are a group of people, note that there is a special offer called "Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket" (nice week-end ticket). It costs 32 Euros (or 30 at the machines) and entitles up to 5 people to travel a whole day on all local trains ("S-Bahn" (S), "Regional-Express" (RE), "Regional-Bahn" (RB)). Several such connections to Saarbrücken only use such trains, so this is not a real limitation.

If you arrive at some other airport, things are not that simple, but still easy. From Frankfurt-Hahn, served by Ryanair and other cheap airlines, there is a quite regular bus-service. From Stuttgart, Cologne or Dortmund you would also take the train, but this might take a good three to four hours.

From the Train Station:

From the train station to your hotel you can use public transport: Buses and a tramway that is called "Saarbahn". A single ticket for 2.10 Euros (1.70 with a German "BahnCard") is valid for one ride in the city including all necessary changes. Single tickets can be bought on the bus. A weekly ticket ("Wochenkarte") which is valid from Monday to next week's Monday noon costs 14 Euros. The only catch is that you cannot buy this ticket on the bus or at the university. However, it is sold at quite a number of places, for example, at the youth hostel. Ask you hotel for the closest location. Convenient locations are near the "Rathaus" busstop, (about 20 meters down the street) or in the mall opposite to the main train station.

If your hotel is one of "City Hotel", "Hotel Weller" or the youth hostel, you take the tramway from the train station to "Johanneskirche" (two stops). There you walk across the street to the bus stop "Rathaus" [city map with bus/tram stops, pdf, 2.4MB] (lower left corner of the map is the city center). For "Hotel Weller", you take bus 101 or 124 and get off at stop "An der Trift" (approx. 4 stops). For the youth hostel, you take again one of the same buses and get off at stop "Prinzenweiher/DJH" (approx. 5 stops).

For the "City Hotel", you can take bus 124 (careful at the direction!) from the main train station until "Haus der Zukunft". From Rathaus you can get to "Haus der Zukunft" either by bus 101, 103, 104 or 125, or on foot (from Johanneskirche it is approximately 5 minutes).

You might decide to walk, in particular, if you are living in the "City Hotel". For details consult the city map, or the map at the link for the city/bus stops map above.

Specific bus queries (using the names of the bus/tram stops) can be entered here (enter the name of the origin bus/tram stop in the "von" field, the destination in the "nach" field, and in the next two, date and time).

Getting to the MPI:

From "Rathaus": Take bus 101, 102 or 109 to Unversity. From "Haus der Zukunft" (City Hotel), "An der Trift" (Hotel Weller) or "Prinzenweiher/DJH" (youth hostel): Take bus 101 or 124. Don't go back to the city center, but use the same direction as on your way from the train station to the hotel. There are two platforms for the bus stop "Haus der Zukunft". The one mentioned above is at Dudweilerstrasse. The second one is at Richard-Wagner Strasse, and from there you can take buses 102 or 109 to University.

Get off at the bus stop "Universität Mensa". The MPI building is located on the left side a bit further down the street (Building number E1.4). You can also look at the map below.