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 …

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 …

++++++++++ FLICKR PHOTOSTREAM UP ++++++++++
++++Due to my colleagues wishes to have the images in high res, I have now uploaded them to my FLICKR photostream. You will find the COMPLETE sets there from now on++++
I will be constantly updating this post throughout the day with news and photos.  Most current news will be at the top.
UPDATE 11pm – President Obama has arrived safely in Dresden and in his hotel, the Taschenbergpalais. In the last hours, I was glued to the window together with my colleagues, and we watched the events …

Now it’s not even a 24 hour countdown anymore until president Obama will arrive in my hometown of Dresden, Germany. For those of you who don’t know where that is, here’s little visual help:

Where is Dresden? Click on image to enlarge.
Finally, after weeks of wondering, we were told today that we were allowed to come into our offices tomorrow and on Friday. I had my doubts, to be honest, since we have so many windows and an unimpaired view of and into the Zwinger where the president might take a …

While the excitement about the visit of the US president mounts, I have to exercise an enormous amount of self control not to tweet and blog every little detail I notice. Apart from the fact that probably no one except me is excited about it (even though some colleagues have been seen lurking at the windows longer than usual), I also don’t want to write anything that might make the job of the people in charge more difficult.
Only a few weeks ago irresponsible use of Twitter caused a major uproar …

Only six days to go until the US president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle visit my hometown, Dresden (Germany). Excitement is mounting, since it’s not everyday that one get’s to see a statesman of that order. (And one for whom one was rooting during the campaign – at least after Hillary gave up.)
The most intriguing question for me and my colleagues is though: will be able to come to work? Published today, the map below shows that the inner city of Dresden has been divided into multiple secure zones …

To follow up on the memorial service I attended last Wednesday, 02/13/2008. At 7pm about 2,000 to 3,000 people gathered in front of the Church of Our Lady (Frauenkirche) in Dresden (Germany) to remember the destruction of our city 63 years ago.
I liked that the audience was a mix: of course, there were elder people, some of them old enough to have witnessed the events that were remembered themselves. But there were also many middle aged people and a lot of younger folks. It’s good to know that the …

Living in Germany and in a historical city like Dresden brings with it a fair knowledge about history, particularly the history of the past 70 years – though the history of Dresden itself …