General - Overall schedule - Workshop program - Hotels - Travel

SPEC Benchmarking Workshop, Paderborn, Sept. 14, 1999

Travel and Location Information

Paderborn

Paderborn is a town of 130,000 in eastern Westphalia (northwestern Germany). In 1999, it commemorates, with a highly renowned historical exhibition, the historic meeting of King Karl (later Emperor Charlemagne) and Pope Leo III, which occurred in 799. The city hosts the world's largest computer museum, the Heinz Nixdorf Museumsforum. For general information on Paderborn (in German), see the Web page of the City of Paderborn, tourism office.

Siemens Nixdorf, the Banking and Retail division of Siemens AG, has provided a travel information web page for Paderborn, including a map of Paderborn and a detailed map of the Siemens facilities. The workshop location (Siemens AG, Customer Conference Center) is the same as Siemens Nixdorf except that the entrance is at building F.
Here, some additional travel information is provided, in particular for participants coming from the USA.

Flights

Two airlines serve the Paderborn-Lippstadt International Airport, acronym PAD, Lufthansa, cooperating with United Airlines, and Eurowings, a European regional airline cooperating with KLM/Northwest. The main transatlantic gateways are Frankfurt for Lufthansa/United (5 Lufthansa flights per day between Frankfurt and Paderborn) and Amsterdam for KLM/Northwest (4 Eurowings flights per day between Amsterdam and Paderborn). Also possible is Düsseldorf which has transatlantic connections to Los Angeles, Chicago, Orlando, and Newark, and train connections to both Paderborn and Wuppertal. Trains from Düsseldorf connecting to Paderborn run about every hour, with travel times between 2 h 10 min and 2 h 50 min (1-3 changes of train).

The bus connections between Paderborn airport and Paderborn city are shown in the airports's bus connection web page (the URL for the airport bus connection on the Siemens Nixdorf web page is temporarily incorrect). Note that these connections are somewhat limited: Hourly on workdays, but every two hours only, and not before 11:30 AM on Sundays. Passengers arriving at "odd" times may need a taxi or a rental car.

Trains

An alterative to a direct flight into Paderborn that may be worth considering is a flight to the gateway (Amsterdam or Frankfurt) only, and continuation by train. Arrival times after transatlantic flights tend to vary somewhat, and you may have to wait several hours for a connecting flight to Paderborn. (At the return from my last SPEC trip, I missed the connecting flight and had to wait 3 hours in Amsterdam. RW). Trains from Frankfurt connecting to Paderborn leave Frankfurt airport every hour, with about 3 h 20 min to 4 h travel time (2-3 changes of train). Trains from Amsterdam connecting to Paderborn leave Amsterdam Shiphol also about every hour, with 4 - 5 h travel time (2-3 changes of train).

Train connections for Germany, including connections from/to Amsterdam, can be conveniently viewed with the online schedule of the Deutsche Bahn; the URL (english-language query form) is http://bahn.hafas.de/bin/query.exe/en.
Note: For Paderborn main railway station, type "Paderborn Hbf", for Amsterdam airport, type "Amsterdam Shiphol". Frankfurt airport, somewhat confusingly, has two railway stations and is listed with them separately: "Frankfurt(M) Flugh R" (regional station, change of train in Frankfurt main station) and "Frankfurt(M) Flugh F" (Fernbahnhof = Long-distance train station). For connections to Paderborn, check both. Usually, "R" has the connections with shorter travel times.

Rental cars

The following rental car companies are represented in Paderborn airport: Avis, Europcar (National), Hertz, Sixt (Budget). Check the opening hours when you make a reservation, the airport office may have limited hours on Sundays. Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Düsseldorf, of course, have the usual full range of rental car companies.

Public Transportation in Paderborn and Bad Lippspringe

For the SPEC workshop and meeting days in Wuppertal and Paderborn, you may consider not renting a car, and relying on the public bus system in Paderborn. Information is available on the Web site of the Paderborn bus company PESAG (in German only), including schedule information using the same query interface as the German railway. A single ticket is 1.80 DM. Bus line 4 runs between the inner city (where the two Paderborn hotels are) and Siemens ("SNI Wendeschleife") every half hour (workdays). If you stay in the Bad Lippspringe hotel, VPH buses (lines 356, 450) run every 20 min (daytime, workdays) between Bad Lippspringe and Paderborn. For Siemens, change at "Westerntor" or "Hauptbahnhof" to a PESAG bus, line 4 or line 8. If there are more than a handful of SPEC participants without a car staying in Bad Lippspringe, SPEC plans to provide a bus to Siemens in the morning.

Parking at Siemens

Those coming to the workshop and/or the SPEC business meetings with a car should follow the signs "Siemens Nixdorf" and later "Gebäude F" (building F). Visitor parking is provided in the marked area enclosed by a gate. Please use the intercom and ask the guard to open the gate.