UPDATE 2.30pm – my colleague who sits opposite me just started screaming excitedly and pointed wildly at the sky, while she almost tore the cord of her headset out of the PC. After almost spilling my lunch over myself in shock, I understood that she was seeing Air Force One in the sky. Forgetting to swallow, but swearing hard, I hastened to switch lenses on my camera and raced into our – now police free – cafeteria. And indeed, it WAS Air Force One! Got a nice shot or two of her as well. Will post later.

Guys, these two days have ROCKED!

Air Force One leaving Dresden

UPDATE 2pm – President Obama has left Dresden on Marine One. We could see the formation of six Black Hawks and his helicopter from afar. All in all, this has been very exciting, but I don’t think any other person in Dresden views it like that. We were priviledged that we could come to our offices. We had a clear view of the Zwinger and of the road right in front of the Taschenbergpalais. The rest of the people didn’t see zip.

Barack Obama in front of the Zwinger in Dresden, June 5th (photo taken under sniper surveillance at three meters distance through a glass window around police officers while balancing on a plastic table)

UPDATE 1pm – *argh* The security measures almost cost us the best shots. President Obama was about to walk from the Zwinger to the Taschenbergpalais. First we moaned because a large bus was driven in place to block the view from the people waiting further outside the security fence. But then a whole frakking brigade of police officers marched into our cafeteria, ordered us three meters away from the windows and took position in front of them. While the colleagues on the fourth floor even had to leave their offices looking in the President’s direction and the cafeteria, we could at least stay inside. The reasoning: the snipers were a little nervous and trigger happy and to prevent any of us getting shot accidentally when we were waving our zoom lenses, we had to back off.

Standing on tables, chairs, the couch and the window sill we still managed to get some decent shots – photos, if you prefer :)

Click on the photo below to go to my flickr stream and see the image at full resolution (then you can see President Obama real close):

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UPDATE 11am – I am having a trantrum right now. All of the sudden, the police outside decided that we were posing a security risk and sent some troops into our office building to restrain us a little. Granted, I can understand them. Some colleagues were just too excited by the goings-on and despite our well-meant advice not to open the windows or point the zoom lenses into the direction of the snipers, they couldn’t resist. Can’t blame the security outside that they got fed up with us.

The colleagues and me who were in the cafeteria yesterday exercised more restrain the closer the arrival of Obama came. We did not open the windows anymore and did not photograph the snipers directly. They were fine with that. And we also had three police officers with us on the fifth floor. They were taping the whole thing and helping with coordination. They came to check us out and decided that we were harmless, just some interested people and let us stay.

Oh, well, at least I got a picture of the motorcade of our German chancellor, Angela Merkel, arriving. I dislike her, but at least she’s punctual. She was supposed to meet Obama at 8.45 am and her cars arrived exactly at 8.44 am in front of the hotel Taschenbergpalais.  More photos on FLICKR.

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Yesterday, after an eventful day and much excitement for us, the president of the United States finally arrived in Dresden.

I and some of my colleagues stayed at work to watch the event; we had prime time seats (so to speak) and probably the best view of the entire thing. Every news station would envy us.

Around 6pm, the snipers took their positions around us, something that made us hesitant to open any windows anymore. After all, this was not some kind of James Bond movie, this was for real and even though we joked about it, we were not willing to test the police officers. And we didn’t want to get thrown out of the building.

Most of us got something to eat before 6pm, afterwards our office building was inside a newly defined secure zone and we didn’t want to go outside. Mainly because we were concerned that they wouldn’t let us back in. But once inside, we had a little Welcome-party of our own; I guess the snipers on the other building were not too happy. But since we had sort of our own police bodyguards (more about that later, have to check in with security if I am allowed to talk about it), we were fine. No one of us had a red, shining, cross hair appear on our chests. At least we didn’t notice.

Due to the surprising demand for high resolution photos, I uploaded all my pictures to FLICKR. Feel free to browse, comment and share.

More photos here

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