I’ve pretty much “live”-blogged the visit of the US president to Dresden, so I guess there’s no need of another article concerning that matter. So, here are just some random thoughts.

Link to flickr two day coverage / Obama close up shots

Tantrums

Yeah, well, sorry for that. When the police officers suddenly appeared in our office building and bullied us away from the windows it made me cranky. At least the first officers were somewhat nice about it. They asked us to step at least one meter away from the windows. I could understand their reasoning. The snipers outside were getting nervous with all the movement behind our windows and since they were obviously allowed to shoot but realized that we probably were not really a danger, the best solution was to have police present with us. What got to me was the second unit of officers on Friday. They were tense, unfriendly and in my opinion cranky with us. Given the situation, I can somewhat understand them, but still. So, lets call it even. They got their security fixed and we could remain in the building.

Snipers across the building – they really were not happy with the many of us on Friday

Security on the roofs across the Postplatz

Nice police officers

We’ve also had three very nice officers with us on Thursday. They were recording the event from our fifth floor. They were absolutely delighted about the opportunity since they had a grand view and could help with the coordination. Above that, they were really friendly and polite to everyone. Around 7pm my colleague and I brought them some snacks from our vending machine (the police officers did not have security clearance for our building and were virtually ’stuck’ on the fifth floor). The chocolate and gummi bears were received gratefully. And it makes me grin now as I realize that this time it were the East Germans giving sweets to the West Germans It payed off in more ways than we thought. About an hour later, the officers were descending to the fourth floor were we were waiting. The snipers from across the building had asked them to check us out, just be sure. The officers took a look around, saw that our cameras were only cameras and we were having a jolly good time, and reported that back to the security forces outside. That was probably the reason we were left alone for the rest of the evening. Thank you guys for that!

They even took a picture of the three of them, printed it and left it with a Thank You note for our hospitality at our security desk. Well, we were glad we could help. All of the colleagues present on Thursday were full of praise for the three officers, their politeness and openness. You can come back any time! Especially the officer who seemed to be in charge, or seemed to be the oldest one of the bunch. Are you single? Please let me know!

President Obama arrives in Dresden on Thursday

Additional police units get ready

President Obama’s motorcade arrives in front of the Zwinger Friday noon

President Barck Obama (center), David Axelrod (right of president)

Parking

Will all due respect for an event that large with almost 4,000 police officers from all around the country involved: you guys need to learn how to park! My colleagues and I didn’t trust our eyes when groups of 5-10 police vans arrived at a time and just … stopped. I refuse to call it parking because it just isn’t parking when you leave your car just when you cleared the street. I estimate that you could put at least 100-150 cars on the Postplatz, properly aligned. With the wild parking by the police units, there was room for about 30  So, instead of practicing to drive escort formation, practice how to park :peace:

A row of cars looks nice on the street while driving, but not when parking

>

Epic parking fail

Assuming they are not Cylons, they must have a plan

Feedback

Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to look at my pictures, comment or increase the traffic to my site and my flickr stream. I really appreciate it, it took a lot of work coordinating it in the last two days. On Thursday, I was constantly running between my desk and the windows, taking pictures, blogging the event, uploading and tagging photos … same thing yesterday. I even went into work again in the evening to upload the rest of the photos. So, thanks to all of you for the interest! (To my colleagues: the embarrassing pictures of us cramped like sardines in the cafeteria while being held in check by the police will be published on the groupshare on Monday  )

Statistics for my flickr account (click on image for larger view)

Many more clicks than usual on my blog

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