Berlin 2007

File = 2007 08 08 @ 1329 - Berlin & Frankfurt 2007.odt page 17 of 17

Path = C:\CTH\!2007 new entrance to WWW\2007 07 28 WWW\Germany 2007 WWW\WWW Travelogue\

Jean and I Visit Germany in July 2007

by Carl Helmers

On July 5 2007, Jean and I began a nearly two-week trip to Berlin and Frankfurt, Germany. The first part of the trip was for Jean's participation in the 2007 instance of the International Narcotics Research Conference (INRC), which this year was held at the Freie Universität Berlin in the southwest part of that re-unified city.

The sessions were held in the university's Henry Ford Bau, a building (“bau” in German) located on the grounds of the Freie Universität Berlin about 5 kilometers from the conference hotel, the Best Western Hotel Steglitz in the southwestern part of Berlin. Thus, the local conference organizers provided scheduled charter bus service. One day, in the sunny and pleasant Berlin summer weather, Jean and I walked through the residential streets to the conference venue following one of the routes that we had previously observed the charter bus take us.

As usual at these meetings, I attended and paid attention to the scientific sessions July 9, 10, 11 and 12 in my “fly on the wall” mode – absorbing information without comment to add to my familiarity with the field. This background comes in handy during the after hours social pleasantries when I can engage in conversation with Jean's scientific colleagues with some superficial familiarity with their field of interest. As happens every time, some male chauvinist scientist came up to both Jean and myself at one of her scientific social events and assumed that I (not Jean) am the famous scientist who traveled from afar to the meeting. He was soon politely made aware that he should be talking to Jean rather than I. Jean and I often chuckle at this archaic 19^th century gender based assumption in this 21^st century. :-)>

Jean, as an officer in the INRC organization, started the program off with opening comments on the first day of sessions Monday July 9. We were well rested after a few days in Berlin following traveling from our starting point, the Rochester International Airport to Berlin via New York City's Kennedy International Airport.

We planned to begin our trip at the local Rochester International Airport with a Delta Commuter flight scheduled for departure at 14:20 to arrive at New York City's Kennedy International Airport in New York City at 15:51 for connection to a Delta airlines direct flight to Berlin scheduled to leave at 19:20 for an all night trip. In theory, we would then have nearly four hours wait in the JFK Delta Airlines terminal prior to jumping off “across the pond” to Berlin. However, that was not to be.

We got a call from Delta Airlines at home circa 11:00 on July 5 as we were finishing up packing for the nearly two-week trip. The automated phone robot which called us gave an 800 number to call because our early afternoon plane to JFK in New York City had been canceled. July 5 2007 was a day of air transportation problems due to early summer thunderstorms throughout the eastern part of the U.S.

As a result when Jean called the 800 number the robot gave us, the human agent who answered told her that we had been rescheduled to leave Rochester nearly two hours later at 16:10 so that we would in theory still get to JFK in time for our 19:20 flight to Berlin.

So while we waited an extra hour or so, we checked our packing lists one more time before our usual 20-minute drive to the Rochester International Airport [ROC.] At the airport we checked our baggage through to Berlin via JFK. As might be expected, the plane finally left ROC almost an hour late, after 17:00. This was not exactly re-assuring since we knew that the one hour flight extended by air traffic delays would be very tight getting from ROC to JFK.

We got to observe how well (no kidding) Delta handled a difficult potential problem for two of its customers (us). Given the history of the canceled earlier connection, Delta did a a couple of operational moves exactly right for us given our now tight connection to the Berlin flight.

The first of these is that Delta assigned us seats in the first row of the fully occupied passenger seats on its Canadair twin jet commuter plane so that we could get off the plane before any other passengers. While this may be due to the fact that these were clearly the last seats available on that full plane, this allowed us to scramble off the plane at about 19:00 and start hurrying with our heavy carry-on bags from the commuter side of the giant Delta terminal at JFK to its international departure side an unknown (but infinite in our minds) distance away for its scheduled 19:20 departure.

The second major operational help that Delta's people provided is that perhaps a couple of hundred meters inside the commuter jet's gate, as we headed down the terminal's corridor on our way to the international departure section, a friendly Delta agent in an electric transport cart met us and motioned us to get in. He then sped us closer to the international gate which must have been most of a kilometer or so away! We still had maybe a hundred or more meters to rush to the actual gate once the cart could travel no further.

We ultimately got to the Berlin flight departure gate circa 19:15. Boarding of the Berlin flight of course had been been in progress for some time. As we made our way to our seats on the packed Boeing 767, we said hello to some of Jean's scientific colleagues from New York City who were also bound for INRC. Of course, they had already boarded the flight by the time we made our way to our seats in back of the wing. The crew closed the cabin doors of our Delta non-stop flight to Berlin circa 19:40.

But of course, the prior thunderstorms that had changed our early flight arrangements that Thursday July 5 had a broad impact on the U.S. air transport system that was to extend for a few more hours. After our Berlin bound plane pushed back and turned toward the departure taxiways, we literally inched away from the gate area. This was exactly the kind of JFK ground snarl I read about in an Aviation Week & Space Technology news story in an issue published about the time of our trip :-)>

Soon after that, our plane's captain made an announcement. He told us that -- perhaps due to all the bad weather that day – there were a mere 66 flights scheduled ahead of us for departure, so we would be in this crawling ground traffic on the taxiways for a while. He concluded by telling us that since we wouldn't be moving for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, he was turning off the seatbelt sign so that we were free to walk about the cabin until he got word that the plane was going to move again. Then after a half an hour he informed us to fasten our belts again for a few minutes since he was going to move the plane. This pattern repeated several times until finally, circa 22:00 our plane left JFK bound across the Atlantic for Berlin.

Once airborne, the flight was long and uneventful. The pilot announced that the flight time to Berlin from West to East across the Atlantic that day would be 7 hours, so we eventually landed in Berlin circa 05:00 EDT, or 11 AM Berlin time on July 6. The airport we landed at in Berlin is the Tegel Lufthaven.

Given all the last minute changes and tight timing of our connection at JFK, to our amazement Delta came through with that all important detail when starting a long trip: our checked bags had made it to Berlin from Rochester! After retrieving our bags, we cleared local customs in Berlin then changed some dollars into Euros for our local spending money. We hailed a cab in front of the Tegel terminal to take us for a 30-Euro ride to the Best Western Steglitz International hotel.

Having made it to Berlin, we joined several of Jean's INRC colleagues for a cab ride to a dinner at the Vox Restaurant in the Grand Hyatt Berlin on Marlene-Dietrich Platz a couple of blocks from the Brandenburg Gate.

The next day, July 7, we spent mostly sleeping in our hotel room to adjust to the fact that Berlin time is 6 hours ahead of our usual Eastern Daylight Time. Then on July 8, we spent most of that beautiful sunny day exploring the area in Berlin near where the old cold war dividing line had separated its western from eastern parts at the Brandenburg Gate. The remaining images in this travelogue essay are a sampling from our trip, which lasted in Germany until we returned from Frankfurt on July 17.

Sunday July 8 2007 was a bright sunny day in Berlin, the day before the 2007 INRC conference was to begin. The only conference activity that day was late afternoon registration and an evening reception at the Henry Ford Bau venue on the Freie Universität Berlin campus. So, that morning Jean and I took a taxicab journey back to the vicinity of the Brandenburg Gate in order to “see the sights” and enjoy the beautiful weather. Several images from this journey follow.

KIF_1295 is an image of the Brandenburg Gate that Jean took looking toward the east, showing lots of tourists and touristy apparitions like the fellow dressed in a bear costume standing on some sort of box structure in the left foreground of this image. The weather on this sunny Sunday was perhaps the best of our stay in Berlin, though the temperature was only in the vicinity of 16º C (61º F).

I captured image Dscn1929 of Jean with the Brandenburg gate at her back from a bit further way from the Brandenburg Gate with my Nikon 4600 camera.

Jean of course followed by capturing the next image of myself in the same general situation with her Kyocera SL400R lightweight miniature digital camera.

Then, we turned around to face the west to take some pictures of the area that faces the Brandenburg Gate: the now historical site in the reunited Berlin called “Checkpoint Charlie” manned by U.S. Military personnel throughout the Cold War era from the end of World War II when Berlin was divided until re-unification after the Soviet Union and its satellites collapsed circa 1989.

Jean and I of course grew up with schoolroom stories in the late 1950s and early1960s of current events associated with totalitarian places like the former Soviet Empire and the former East Germany (and East Berlin.) The old U.S. Army guard house at Checkpoint Charlie is now one of the “must capture” images of any visit to re-unified Berlin. This image is one I captured as we started walking away from the broad former “no mans land” zone that separates Checkpoint Charlie from the Brandenburg Gate nearly a kilometer away to the east.

Several minutes later I captured image DSCN1956 pointing my camera back toward the east from the area to the right of the Checkpoint Charlie's guardhouse as seen in image DSCN1948. That vertical pole is seen in the next image I selected, DSCN1956, as the mounting for a strange larger than life poster of a uniformed communist East German Stasi border guard such as those who used to enforce the East German totalitarian regime.

Jean took the following image of the sign's text in several languages warning that you are about to leave the “American Sector” -- a historical sign retained from an era that only ended 18 years ago.

After we wandered around a little further in the vicinity of the Brandenberg Gate, we arrived again at the Grand Hyatt Berlin hotel where we had eaten dinner Friday night. We hailed a cab to take us back to the Steglitz hotel in order to catch the charter bus to the Freie Universität Berlin for INRC registration and the opening reception later that evening.

During the week, every day we arrived at the Henry Ford Bau venue of the conference on the daily morning charter bus ride from the hotel, for the first session typically beginning at 08:30. On Wednesday July 11, we asked an INRC colleague of Jean's to capture the following image of Jean and myself in front of the building.

The conference concluded with its traditional banquet on Thursday, July 12. The banquet was in a restaurant somewhere in Berlin in a former industrial building with an English language name something like “the Waterworks.” Our last charter bus rides were from the conference hotel to the banquet and back.

On Friday mid day, we took our last Berlin taxi to Tegel Lufhaven. There we headed off to Frankfurt am Main by plane. Jean had first visited the city of Frankfurt am Main with her parents as a child in 1964 when she was only 10 years old. They went to Germany because her father had business relations with the Leitz microscope firm. Her father had been the Leitz microscopes dealer / sales agent for the eastern U.S. based in Rochester, until he died in 1976. While Jean was studying for her doctorate in Biophysics at the University of Rochester, in 1977 she spent 6 months at the Max-Plank-Institut für Biophysik in Frankfurt. She visited Frankfurt again in 1983 and 1998 for scientific conferences, so Frankfurt definitely had an attraction for Jean to see again. For myself, this was nearly my first time in Frankfurt.

I had previously been to Germany one time in 1983. I took that trip courtesy of the West German airline Lufthansa as part of a party of press representatives from several US technical publications in cluding one of my own, Robotics Age. Lufthansa flew us to Frankfurt then immediately connected to their flight to Hanover for a few days on a press tour of the Hannover Messe (Hanover Fair). So on this visit 24 years later I wanted to see Frankfurt in more detail than changing planes twice at its airport.

As planned long ahead of time, Jean and I hopped on what turned out to be an excellent domestic German discount airline, “Air Berlin” for the short Airbus A-320 twin jet ride from Berlin to Frankfurt. The flight was smooth and well coordinated on a hot summer day in Frankfurt am Main. To top it all off, this discount airline handed every passenger a small token of appreciation for our business as we left the airplane after arrival.

I captured this image of our chocolate hearts in their red wrappers on the desk in our hotel room at the Frankfurt Hilton after we arrived. Good thing, for we consumed them shortly thereafter. Thus, began our whirlwind tour of Frankfurt over the next few days.

One of the first features we noted about Frankfurt versus the noticably low building heights in Berlin is that Frankfurt is a much more “built-up” city – many large buildings like in cities such as Boston, New York, Toronto, Chicago or San Francisco in North America. Here is a view from our 10^th floor corner room in the Frankfurt Hilton. From the hotel room, the buildings looked comparable to those in of most modern cities, with the exception of one medieval tower poking above the roof line of a much more modern building set in a skyline of modern buildings. I captured this image in the late afternoon sun of that July day, circa 18:00 or so.

Here is a picture taken with a little more magnification zooming in on that medieval tower a minute or so later.

As we began our extensive walks around Frankfurt am Main, with this tower so dominant in our hotel room view, we had to get a closeup from street level. Jean captured the following image Saturday July 14 as we walked near the tower.

The image below of “The Eschenheimer Tower' comes from this Wikipedia page which describes the picture as an 1859 watercolor by one Carl Theodor Reiffenstein according to an anonymous drawing from 1790.

Of course, there is more to Frankfurt than this one medieval building. As we walked all over the city in the next several days we were struck by the vast amount of construction going on. I took the following image from our Frankfurt Hilton 10^th floor hotel room showing a scene a few blocks away.

Our first target on Jean's list of places to see in Frankfurt was a short walk from our Frankurt Hilton temporary home base. This is the Frankfurter Hof, a famous Frankfurt hotel. I captured this image of Jean from across the street in order to show the hotel's name along with Jean in the archway...

Jean first stayed at this hotel with her parents in 1964 on a grand vacation trip when she was a 10 year old “only child.” Her father and mother first took her to the 1964 “World's Fair” in New York City. After visiting the NY World's Fair, Jean and her parents flew on a Lufthansa Boeing 707 flight to Frankfurt, where her father had business contacts.

After walking past the Frankfurter Hof, we walked on for a mile or so to come to a patch of buildings called the Römer Platz. This is a square and its immediate vicinity which had escaped complete destruction during World War II. After the war, this part of the city was restored as a Frankfurt tourist attraction.

My soon to be 88-year old mother in New Jersey needed a replacement for a Bavarian cuckoo clock. Her long time German pen pal “Eva” had brought her the now broken clock as a gift when Eva and her husband visited my mother and father several decades ago. The clock had stopped operating several years ago. My mother could not find anyone to properly fix the clock in New Jersey. So to replace the broken clock I sought a shop that offered with genuine Bavarian cuckoo clock souvenirs for sale. Among several shops with souvenir cuckoo clocks at various prices, we found this shop nestled on one side of the Römer Platz.

Within this shop I purchased the ideal replacement to be delivered on my mother's 88^th birthday later in 2007. After purchasing the clock, we walked back to have a wonderful Saturday evening dinner followed by ice cream in a Haagen Das outlet a block or so away from the Frankfurt Hilton.

On Sunday, July 15, Jean and I did our longest walking expedition in the summer heat of Frankfurt am Main. After breakfast, we walked to the vicinity of the Max-Plank-Institut so that Jean could show me where she had lived and studied in 1977. The walk took us nearly 10 kilometers by “shanks' mare”, across the Main river, to get to the vicinity of what had been the Max-Plank-Institut für Biophysik in 1977.

Our first point of interest was the building at Paul Erlich Strasse 3, where Jean had lived and worked while doing her physiological research in 1977. This building, which was also owned by the Max-Plank-Institut für Biophysik at the time, is clearly no longer part of the institute.

When Jean studied here in 1977, her laboratory facilities were on the first ground floor in back of her in this image. While there she lived on the third floor of the building.

Then we walked around the corner to see what was the main building of the Max-Plank-Institut für Biophysik in 1977 when Jean had been there. We found that the former Max-Plank-Institut für Biophysik building, three decades later is now the Kennedy Villa hotel.

On another side of the building is the grand window of the former office of the director of the Max- Plank-Institut für Biophysik, now a sunny gathering place on the ground floor of the hotel.

The friendly manager of the Kennedy Villa hotel met us after we walked in, so we got a nice tour of the facility and picked up brochures. We stopped for a while in the hotel's JFK Gusto lounge to have a local Frankfurt beer before continuing our walk.

Then after our sojourn, we headed west to catch a street car ride to the main Frankfurt train station, somewhat closer to our hotel. After another kilometer or so of walking, we finally arrived back at the Frankfurt Hilton...

After another day of rest and relaxation in Frankfurt, we headed back home exhausted on the morning of the 17^th of July. We ultimately got home later that day after a westbound flight that took about 8 hours from Frankfurt to JFK and another commuter jet from JFK to ROC.