I went one day to the stuttgart hackspace (http://shackspace.de/) and they gave me a nice introduction and tour, it's really big, they do really cool stuff.

if you are around you should go and take a look.

Its definitely big and active, not dead at all. The people are very open and most quite friendly, I can recommend it. Its just more on the hardware side of things, or at least thats the impression I got.

Thanks, I was looking for something like that.