June 2025 – dangermouse.net

Europe trip day 9: Prague to Vienna

Our main job this morning was to catch our train to Vienna. We got up and had breakfast, finishing off the muesli we’d bought. I tried Google Translate on the not-milk that we’d accidentally bought, and found out it was soured buttermilk. Which was surprising, but not bad, as buttermilk is pretty good.

We went for a short walk so I could take some photos of the main square and Astronomical Clock with a long lens, and my wife could get a morning coffee. We found a small Italian cafe just off the square and she got a flat white there. They also has focaccia sandwiches and we bought two caprese ones to take with us for lunch on the train. They kindly packed them in a paper bag for us, with serviettes.

Coffee done, we went back to our room and grabbed our bags to check out, leaving the key in the lockbox as requested. Then we walked back to Prague’s main station for our train. When we got there, the departures board indicated that no platform had yet been assigned for our train. The station was very busy, with a lot of people standing around watching the board to find out where their trains were leaving from. The morning was hot and it was pretty warm inside the station. They had a large Lego version of the station building in a glass display case, which was pretty cool.

After ten minutes or so of waiting, the departure platform was announced and joined a horde of other people streaming the same way. Once on the platform I tried to find any indication of where our car number might pull up, but couldn’t find any. So we had to just hope it would be nearby. As it happened, when the train pulled in our car was just a few steps away, and we were right at the front waiting to get on. A lot of people got off though (the train had come from Berlin), and it took several minutes. And as we waited, a man drove a small cart pulling a trailer up and started beeping to get people out of the way. It was tricky with people trying to get off, people crowded around trying to get on, and this cart trying to move everyone away. It looked like the trailer was delivering food for the adjacent restaurant car or something, and slowly the guy pulled forward until the cart was almost blocking the door we were waiting to get in. This forced people waiting on the opposite side of the door to retreat to provide a way out for the people still climbing off the train. So when eventually the stream of people stopped we were the first ones to climb aboard.

Our seats were almost in the centre of the carriage. We were supposed to have facing seats on the aisle, but a woman and man were sitting in the forward facing seats, so we took the window and aisle seats opposite them. The train pulled out for the four hour trip to Vienna, stopping at Brno and Břeclav. The man opposite us got out at Brno, but the woman stayed all the way to Vienna. She had earphones in and was doing stuff on a laptop and didn’t talk to us. Across the aisle from us was a very chatty Asian Australian guy, travelling with two kids, who during the course of the trip told his entire life story to the young British woman sitting next to him.

During the trip we both worked on our sketchbooks. I drew a few scenes from Prague, while my wife filled in her ink scenes from yesterday with watercolour.

We arrived at Vienna Hauptbahnhof just before 15:00. We disembarked and descended the nearest stairs from the platform, which led us to a quiet area with exits in three directions. Using a map to get our bearings, I realised we’d come out the far eastern exit of the station, whereas the best way to our accomodation was from the west (main) exit. But there was no way to get there without either going back up to the platform and walking along it, or exiting the station and walking around outside. We did the latter, reaching the main part of the station, which was huge and busy. From here we walked towards Naschmarkt, which is near our accommodation.

But when we got there, it seemed clear that this was another small set of guest rooms to be accessed by a key code at the door, and a lockbox inside with a key. But I hadn’t received any instruction for how to get inside or access the room key. I searched through my messages from the accommodation and didn’t find anything. So I tried phoning the contact number, but nobody answered. I sent a message through the Booking.com app, and hoped that someone would see it and get back to us. We waited several minutes, with no responses. I scanned the QR code on the accommodation sign at the door, but it said the URL domain was vacant! We started to fear that the accommodation had stopped business and taken our advance payment without informing us!

A man came out of a door next door, pushing a trolley with bottles on it, and we stopped him to ask if he knew anything about the accommodation there. He said as far as he knew it was there and pointed at the sign to suggest we contact them, which we’d already tried. Then an older couple emerged from the door, and we stopped them to ask if they knew anything about the accommodation. It turned out they were staying in one of the other apartments run by the same guy, and they had an SMS message chain with him, and said they’d just contacted him an hour ago. The woman tried phoning (the same number I’d tried), and got through! She explained to him (in German) that we were here and didn’t have check-in information. She listened and then told me to phone him again, and hung up. I called the number again and the guy answered straight away. Phew!

He said he’d sent check-in details to me via WhatsApp. I’d noticed WhatsApp on my phone giving me notifications a day or two ago, and from the notification summary it looked like spam because the guy had sent several messages and the one that was summarised was restaurant recommendations, so I’d ignored it and actually deleted the app, because I don’t ever use it and didn’t want more spam notifications. So he did actually send the check-in info, but I’m a bit surprised that he used WhatsApp as the medium. Anyway, he sent me the details via iMessage, now he knew my phone number, and within a couple of minutes we were safely inside, finally.

The apartment we have for the next week is very nice, with a kitchen, a separate bedroom, and a balcony overlooking a central courtyard. Once we dropped our bags, we went out to get a quick cold drink. One of the places the owner recommended was a cafe just on the corner of the street, so we went there. It was closing at 17:00 and by now it was 16:30, so we had just enough to to get drinks. My wife had an iced caffe latte, while I tried their home made pear and ginger lemonade. It was nice, though I’d hoped for a little more of a ginger kick to it.

We returned to our apartment and looked for some place to have dinner. We felt like something simple and easy, with guaranteed good vegetarian options, so chose a Thai place called All Reis, which was abut 20 minutes walk away in the Inner Stadt area. We stayed in the cool air conditioning until after 18:00, then ventured out into the sultry evening air to walk there. We passed a lot of amazing sights on the way. It looks like there’s a lot to see in Vienna!

When we got to All Reis, there were half a dozen outdoor tables, all occupied, and we were shown to a table inside, and near the back behind a partial dividing wall. There was no air conditioning and it was very warm, with a rotating floor fan blowing air around. We were so warm we moved tables to get closer to the fan. We ordered some vegetarian rice paper rolls to start, then I got a chicken pad siew and my wife got stir fried morning glory in soy chilli sauce with rice. The food was good and very filling, with generous serves, which was good because we were both hungry after our simple sandwich lunch on the train.

After eating we walked back to our apartment via a different route following our noses at first down interesting looking streets and discovering amazing sights at each turn. After a while we ended up at the main St Stephen’s Cathedral.

From there we turned to a more direct route home, passing through the Burggarten, a lovely grassy and tree-filled park looking onto the Hofburg palace.

Then past the historical art museum and back towards our accommodation.

We’d planned to do a load of laundry tonight using the apartment’s laundry room, so we checked that out on our way in. We saw that a completed load was in the machine, and thought we could bring down our laundry and take that load out onto the table there while starting our load. But five minutes later when we returned with our bag of dirty laundry, two other people were there and had just started a load! The machine has 1:38 on the timer to run. So we had to go back down later at almost 22:00 to start our load.

Europe trip day 8: Prague markets, Castle, a bell tower dinner

We didn’t set an alarm this morning, but still woke up before 07:00. We had the muesli we bought last night for breakfast. However the “milk” we got turned out not to be milk, but a sort of drinking yoghurt. I’d scanned two different bottles of milk with Google Translate and determined that both of them were apparently full fat milk (so I don’t know what the difference (was). But then we spotted another carton next to them that looked to be the same amount for a slightly lower prices we grabbed that and went. We didn’t bother to scan it to translate the Czech text, and so ended up not getting milk at all! Nevertheless, it was fine and delicious.

The first stop this morning was Havel Market, supposedly touted as the best street market in Prague. It was only a couple of blocks away. We got there just after 09:00, but they were still setting up lots of the stalls, even though the market is supposed to open at 07:00. Also the variety of stuff there wasn’t great and the whole market was pretty small. Overall it was pretty disappointing and we finished scanning up and down the stalls in about 20 minutes or so.

My wife had also found a Saturday farmers’ market, held on the bank of the Vltava River, a bit of a walk away, past last night’s restaurant. We went there via a different route and ended up walking along the river bank on a promenade near the water, below street level, which was nice. This market was much better than Havel. It had many more stalls, all actively preparing food or selling items, and a buzzing crowd of both locals and tourists walking to and fro. My wife stopped for a coffee at one of the first stalls. They gave her a plastic cup which had a 50 koruna deposit, so we walked down and came back later to drop it off.

Across from there was a stall which had a huge queue, maybe 30 or 40 people long. They were lining up to buy bread spread with pesto. They had five or six different types of pesto and most people were having a huge slice of rye bread with stripes of the slightly different greens spread on them. It must have been good! There were also stalls selling bread, cakes, nuts and dried fruits, meats, cheeses, fruit and vegetables, and cooked food including grilled meat, sausages, potatoes, and things like tortilla wraps, pizzas, and so on. And there were craft stalls, clothing, beer, wine, mead, chocolate and other sweets, and more. The stalls went for maybe 300 metres along the river. We bought a large chunk of a slice made with seeds, nuts, and dried fruit as a snack to keep us going.

At the end we turned around and walked back the way we’d come. We exchanged my wife’s used coffee cup for the 50 koruna deposit and then went looking for a stall where we could spend the coin on something. We found a guy with baklava who had a chocolate and pistachio version for 48, so we gave him the whole coin for it and shared bites. It was melty from the heat, but delicious. We walked back to our room via a (mostly) different route. M. stopped in at an art supply shop that we’d spotted on our way out near the Tesco’s, to briefly look at sketching and watercolour books.

We rested in our room for about half an hour out of the heat of the day and prepared for our afternoon expedition to Prague Castle. On the way walking there we stopped to get some more sustenance. I got some hot chips with cheddar cheese melted on top from Fæncy Fries Kaprova, while M. grabbed an iced coffee from an adjacent Starbucks. Then we continued, walking across the Mánesův Most bridge, north of the more famous Karlův Most. From there it was an uphill hike to Prague Castle, mostly against traffic of people coming down. As we figured out, most of the people visiting the castle were going in the opposite direction to us, entering by the gate we exited at, and departing by the gate we entered.

Once we had climbed the hill we entered at the eastern end of the castle. I didn’t realise that anyone could enter the castle grounds freely. You only needed to buy a ticket to gain entrance to specific attractions within. We had the basic ticket, which allowed us into the Golden Lane, St George’s Basilica, St Vitus Cathedral, and the Old Royal Palace. The first one we came across was the Golden Lane, but unfortunately it seemed all the attractions had been routed to be convenient for people coming from the west entrance and leaving the way we’d come in. We had to walk in a fair way, then backtrack around through the Golden Lane and then retrace our steps again to continue.

The Golden Lane is a narrow laneway lined with tiny medieval houses which apparently housed precious metal and gem workers. A few of the houses had been converted into shops, while some had been made into museum displays of old tools and furniture, as though the workers still lived and worked there. It was cramped in there and we had to wait for others to shuffle in and out. And I banged my head on the low lintel coming out of one.

From here we went to the Basilica of Saint George. The exterior is a rich salmon pink colour and of a style that looks only a few hundred years old, but the interior is obviously much older, being mostly bare limestone, pitted with age. It was consecrated in 921, so is well over a thousand years old. It was a very interesting look at a medieval style basilica, with faded paintings on some of the walls.

Next was St Vitus Cathedral, a much larger Gothic style cathedral, the largest church in the entire Czech Republic. I took photos of several of the external gargoyles before we headed inside. This was very impressive, with some amazing stained glass windows, some of which looked quite modern, and a soaring ceiling high above the vast interior. Around the back of the main altar was a giant reliquary or something made of enormous amounts of silver.

Our final call was the Old Royal Palace, attached to some buildings that looked like a more modern palace. The old palace also looked close to a thousand years old, and consisted mainly of the large Vladislav Hall, with some adjoining rooms. One of these contained the window where the two Catholic lords regent Count Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice, Count Vilem Slavata of Chlum, and their secretary Philip Fabricius were defenestrated in the 1618 Defenestration of Prague, triggering the Thirty Years War.

After touring these sights, we left the Castle via the west entrance and walked back down the hill towards the river. We crossed on the Charles Bridge (Karlův Most), taking our time to admire the statues and views from this historic bridge. It was pretty full of people walking in both directions and the sun was hot in the afternoon. Just before crossing we stopped at a gelato place and got cups of gelato to cool ourselves down and stave of any hunger until our dinner.

We rested in our room for about half an hour and then it was time to go out for our dinner. We had an early reservation for 17:30, since the Restaurant Zvonice said that they were booked out later. We walked over to the Jindřišská Tower (or St Henry’s Tower), a clock and bell tower, the tallest in Prague. The restaurant is on the 8th floor, surrounding some of the bells, making it a really unique location, with old medieval wooden beams and views through the partially shuttered windows to the rooftops below.

The place served traditional Bohemian cuisine, and also had some decent vegetarian options. We chose the goat cheese terrine appetiser, my wife had the truffle risotto, while I had wild boar with blackberry sauce, potatoes, and mushrooms. The food was really good and the atmosphere couldn’t be beaten. Definitely a good choice for our last dinner in Prague!

On the way home we took a slight detour to go see the Old New Synagogue. This is the one where the legendary Golem of Prague is supposed to be slumbering in the attic. There is an external ladder on the side of the synagogue leading to the attic, which made a good photo. After this we returned the short distance to out room for the night.

Europe trip day 7: Berlin to Prague

We got up with the alarm at 07:00. After breakfast at the hotel, we packed our bags for checkout. I had to attend the closing plenary session of my ISO Photography Standards meeting, which was scheduled to end at 13:00. Checkout time for the hotel was midday, so I left my wife to spend the morning as she wanted and then to check out and look after our bags until my meeting was done.

The closing plenary meeting session was just a run through of administrative issues, summarising all of the work done during the week by the various working groups and ad hoc technical groups, future actions, future meetings, adopting formal resolutions, and so on. We also had a tribute for Mr Hitoshi Urabe, a working member of TC 42 for almost 30 years, who retired a couple of years ago, and who passed away recently on 18 May. Urabe-san worked on the set of standard photographic test images published by the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee, known as the ISO/JIS-SCID N series images, including the famous ISO/JIS-SCID N2 test image of the Cathedral Cafe (in some city in Belgium, I think).

Our meeting ended very early, by 10:30. They said lunch would be supplied and would arrive at 11:00, so most people stayed for that before leaving. After eating a couple of sandwiches, I said my farewells to the remaining meeting attendees and departed for the hotel. While walking back to the hotel, when I was almost there, I heard my wife calling me from behind. She was returning from some time at a shopping mall where she was sitting and doing some of her sketching.

We grabbed our luggage from our room and checked out of the hotel. Then walked over to Zoologischer Garten station and caught an S-bahn three stops to the Hauptbahnhof. Because my meeting finished early, we were in plenty of time for our train to Prague. In fact, we could easily have made the previous train, leaving two hours earlier – which I hadn’t booked when looking at the trains back home because I wanted to ensure us enough time to avoid being late. But since we were here early, I tried going into the Deutche Bahn ticket office to see if we could change our seat booking to the earlier train. But when I asked the woman at the reception desk, she just shook her head and said the train was fully booked, without looking at anything. So I don’t know how she knew, but anyway.

The station was crowded with travellers and there were precious few seats anywhere to sit down. So we found a bakery with some tables at the back and bought a pretzel to eat so we could sit there, and then a bit later a bottle of water and my wife had a sandwich for her lunch. A couple of times one of us sat and minded the bags while the other went for a bit of a walk. I went outside the station to the plaza on the southern side, where there were several food stalls and a view of the Reichstag across the river. Finally we moved from the bakery to a Vapiano cafe restaurant where my wife got a cappuccino.

Eventually it came time for us to head to the platform for our train. We were sick of sitting so we walked down early. Which was good because the train pulled in almost 15 minutes before departure time, so we had plenty of time to get on board and settle in. The carriage we were in had a corridor down one side and compartments of six seats, just like the Hogwarts Express. Ours had two men sitting by the windows, and we had the seats next to the corridor. Nobody else entered out compartment, so we had empty seats next to us, at least initially. One man was in a German military uniform, and the other was an older man whose daughter joined the train at the next stop in southern Berlin. They were friendly and suggested later we could swap seats to get views of the mountains as we entered Czechia. They left the train halfway there, at Dresden, and we had the compartment to ourselves for about half an hour, until a young man came in at one of the stations across the Czech border – by which time we’d moved to get window views. The ride was pleasant, with some interesting and scenic countryside – mostly in Czechia as the German landscape was very flat and mostly farmland, while across the border we followed the Elbe river valley as it twisted and turned through rocky hills.

We arrived at Prague about 10 minutes later than scheduled. We walked to our accommodation, which is a lovely small studio apartment in a building just off the main town square. We accessed the key and let ourselves in. It has a terrace balcony with a view of the St Nicholas Church on the Old Town Square. We couldn’t be in a better location!

Because we’d arrived late, we had to hurry straight out to our dinner booking, a good 18 minutes walk away. We got there right on time, at Restaurace Střecha, a fully vegan place that employs homeless people and ex-prisoners. It was quite big inside with plenty of tables, and we got a quiet table around the back away from the more crowded front. We tried the dumplings stuffed with soy meat, served on red cabbage:

And the not-ribs in plum sauce with onion jam and mustard dip:

Both items were really delicious and the serving sizes were very hearty. We were too full to think about dessert, despite a fantastic looking blueberry crumble cake and several other items in the dessert cabinet.

We walked back more slowly to our room, along a different route. We passed a Tesco’s supermarket and stopped to buy some muesli, milk, and yoghurt for our breakfasts here. My wife popped into a shop and bought a small notebook with a decorative Czech poster on the cover. Despite it being after 22:00, the streets were full of people, walking around, eating at restaurants, seeing sights. It seems like there are lots of tourists here!

Finally we reached our room again and had showers before doing some writing, drawing, and reading before bed.

Europe trip day 6: Nollendorfkiez, Bonvivant Cocktail Bistro

Today was sunny. At breakfast we sat outside again, choosing a nice shady spot. But I noticed that everyone else sitting outside had chosen seats in direct sunlight. And what’s more, they were all facing the same direction, into the sun, with the sun shining straight into their face and eyes. And none of them had hats on. Europeans are very weird…

I checked for some local markets within walking distance and found that there was a market at Wittenbergplatz on Thursdays, just a block from our hotel. This gave my wife her plan for the day, although she also had the option of walking half an hour to the art museums in the Kulturforum museum district.

The ISO meeting today began with a technical session on machine vision, a relatively new project to standardise industry methods for applications in robotic vision applications. After that we began the winding-down administrative sections of the Working Group, going over action items, future work, future meetings, and so on. I had a break of a couple of hours in the afternoon, before the Chair Advisory Group meeting in the evening from 17:00-18:30.

The break began just after 14:30 and I went back to the hotel to meet up with M. It was very warm outside, but we used the time to go on a walk to explore more of the surrounding areas of Berlin. We walked east along Kleiststraße to Nollendorfplatz, then southwest through the Nollendorfkiez district of Schöneberg to Viktoria-Luise-Platz. Nollendorfkiez was clearly a gay neighbourhood, with plenty of colourful establishments and eye-catching sights. Viktoria-Luise-Platz was a nice plaza with a fountain and grassy areas cut by paths. A group of people were filming something in one corner. As we left to cosine a helpful man asked us if we needed any help navigating, but we said we were fine, happy to explore at random. From here we continued west through a very nice looking neighbourhood, with well-kept old apartment buildings with nice gardens. We eventually turned north to head back to our hotel.

Once near the hotel, we stopped in at a cafe for my wife to get an iced latte. It had been a very warm walk. After this we went back to the hotel, where I picked up my meeting bag and headed back to the DIN office for the Chair Advisory Group meeting. My wife waited in the hotel until I was done. During the meeting, Dietmar warned everyone that there would be a thunderstorm hitting Berlin soon. I kept an eye on the weather radar on my laptop and thought it might interrupt our walk to our dinner booking tonight, and possibly my walk back from the meeting to the hotel.

The meeting ended a bit early, with the storm bearing down on Berlin and the skies going pitch black. I rushed out and ran the two blocks back to the hotel, with skaters of rain beginning. Partway there the wind picked up tremendously and I had to lean right into it to make headway. I managed to get back to the hotel with only a few fat drops of rain on my clothes. By the time I got upstairs to our room and looked out the window, it was raining heavily. So I was very lucky to have made it.

And then within ten or fifteen minutes it was over. I knew it wouldn’t last long and suggested we wait it out before walking out to dinner. Fortunately we had some extra time because of the early finish to the meeting. We headed out with a very light sprinkle still in effect, but it stopped after a few minutes and the clouds blew away as fast as they arrived. The storm had cooled down the temperature considerably, which was good as it was a hot day.

We walked east back towards Nollendorfplatz and then turned south down a different street until we found Bonvivant Cocktail Bistro. This is a high end vegan restaurant and bar, which does a five or six course tasting menu, with optional cocktail pairings for each course. We chose the five course meal, but added the extra chef’s specialty dish, and just had separate drinks rather than the full pairing set.

The meal was amazing. Each course had incredible flavours and textures combined in unusual ways to make something that was a delight to the senses. And our waiter was extremely friendly and gave us just the right amount of attention, and was very patient with our questions about the food, the drinks, the restaurant in general.

The whole meal took almost three hours, and we left just after 22:00 for the walk back to our hotel. The weather had cooled down and was a bit breezy, but I found it pleasant and refreshing after the heat of the day. We got back to our hotel and had showers to freshen up before bed. (No photos today because I don’t want to stay up even later uploading and labelling them…)

Europe trip day 5: meeting social dinner, Kurfürstendamm

We got up with the alarm at 07:00 today, although I was awake before it went off. M. slept through the whole night, but I haven’t quite got there yet. The day began rainy and we had to have breakfast inside rather than out on the patio. Showers were intermittent during the morning. I managed to walk to the DIN office without any rain, but it began again as the meeting got started.

Today we had a full program of technical ad hoc group discussions. Topics included measuring angle-dependent lens flare, low light performance with image stabilisation, depth measurement, and image resolution. In the first topic we had a guest from ISO TC 172 Optics and Photonics to talk to us about their standard for measuring veiling glare, which is a similar technical issue, and we planned to align our standards to be consistent with one another.

During a mid-morning break in the meeting I sketched the Brandenburg Gate, using a photo I took last night as a reference.

I went for another walk during the lunch break, exploring some of the neighbourhood nearby. It was mostly residential areas with blocks of flats, but I walked along a canal for a bit as well, which was nice as it was lined with large, leafy chestnut trees. I only identified them because of all of the fallen chestnuts on the ground!

After the meeting this evening was the social function. This was held on the 10th floor roof terrace of the DIN building, which had a decent view across Berlin. We could see the expanse of the Tiergarten and the surrounding buildings, though I think the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate were hidden from view. The food was a cold buffet of dishes including a pasta with chicken, a quinoa salad with mini strips of schnitzel, falafels, and some cheese and vegetable pastries, with stewed rhubarb with yoghurt as a sweet. Not fancy, but pretty good. We chatted with some of the other meeting participants who had brought their wives as well, then did a big group photo, which the partners sat out of, and M ended up taking the photos so that all the meeting attendees could be in it.

We didn’t stay too long, leaving to take advantage of the long twilight and go for a bit of a walk down Kurfürstendamm, Berlin’s famous shopping boulevarde. We went as far as the Hard Rock Cafe, which we went into to look at the music memorabilia. Then we returned back to our hotel, stopping along the way to get a salted caramel cinnamon roll from a fancy cinnamon roll shop. They looked so god I couldn’t resist. I ate it in our room, and it was delicious.

Also at the hotel we got help from a guy at reception to print out some tickets for Prague Castle which I bought online today. I thought we should go see the castle when we’re in Prague on Saturday, and not waste any time queueing up to buy tickets there. They online tickets had to be physically printed though, so I had to find a way and thankfully the hotel could do it for us. The backup was getting someone at the DIN offices to print it, but now I won’t have to do that.

Europe trip day 4: Tiergarten, Brandenburg Gate

We woke up about 05:00 today, slowly adjusting to the time zone, but feeling less tired than yesterday. The weather had changed to become overcast and chilly, which was a welcome change compared to the heat of the past two days. We went down to have breakfast and sat outside in the cool morning air again, this time with jackets against the chill. I’d downloaded a German bird pack for eBird after seeing several birds at breakfast yesterday, and this time I did a bird count, recording dozens of common swifts, some house sparrows, hooded crows, common ravens, a herring gull, and what I think (based on Merlin ID and a recording of the calls) a Eurasian blackcap. Oh and some pigeons.

Just before 09:00 we left the hotel; me for my ISO meeting and my wife for the Berlin Zoo and Aquarium, where she was planning to spend the day. It was good to have a cooler day for that.

At my meeting we got stuck into the technical sessions. We looked at image stabilisation, which finished early because there were not many comments on the current draft. In the free time people brought up proposals to revise two old standards, for updating methods for measuring camera lens distortion and modifying the test chart for measuring onto-electronic conversion functions to reduce problems with lens flare. After a break we got stuck into several new standards regarding various aspects of HDR images: best practices for file handling, editing, display, etc.; extensions to the recent HDR image file format standard; and new work on live photos (photos with short video clips embedded).

On a break I went out the back door of the DIN building and saw that one of the plane trees lining the street had its upper half torn off by yesterday’s wind. About half the tree had fallen off and was lying on the footpath adjacent to the road. The wind continued today, but not as strong as yesterday.

At lunch I went for a walk over to the Tiergarten. There is a path that runs along a canal and passes a tall fence. I saw two people who had gotten off their bicycles, standing close to the fence and looking through, and then taking photos. I realised this was part of the zoo and they must have been seeing some animals inside. I went over to get a look… and saw kangaroos. The two people seemed really excited, but of course for me this was possibly the dullest possible animal in the entire zoo, so I quickly resumed walking. A bit later on I did manage to see some scimitar oryxes as well. I didn’t get too far before having to turn back for the afternoon meeting session. It rained a bit on the way back.

Or meeting finished early this afternoon, before 16:00. I met up with my wife at the hotel after her day at the zoo and we left soon after to go walking through the Tiergarten before dinner. We entered this amazing park and walked east towards the Brandenburg Gate. The Tiergarten is amazing, with some parts like walking through a forest, with dense trees all around.

We stopped off at the Siegessäule victory column in the middle of the park to have a look at this, but we didn’t bother paying to climb it.

We continued east to the rose garden, which was very nice with a lot of flowers out, although the central area was fallow with a barrier around it.

Continuing on, we arrived at the Brandenburg Gate, where we stopped for some photos and then a drink at the bar of the Hotel Adlon Kempinski, just east of Pariser Platz. This is a very fancy hotel with lots of marble everywhere and plush stuffed chairs in the bar area where we sampled a German Riesling while we rested our feet a bit before heading back to the far side of the Tiergarten for dinner.

A long walk later we arrived at the Tiergarten-Quelle, a German restaurant with a beer garden. We initially went inside, but they told us to go out and sit in the beer garden, presumably because the inside tables were all booked. We found a table in the beer garden, which was across the street, and ordered some food: semmelknödel with mushroom sauce for my wife and a schweinshaxe with sauerkraut and pumpernickel bread for me. The food took a while to arrive as a lot of people were ordering, so I took the time to draw a sketch of the beer garden.

The schweinshaxe was very good, and my wife said she liked the dumplings too.

After this we had a bit of a walk back to our hotel again, which we needed to walk off some of the dinner! We got back and retired for the evening.

Europe trip day 3: ISO meeting, schnitzel

I slept solidly for a few hours but then woke up and was dozing lightly. But I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be almost 06:00. We got up and went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast when it opened at 06:30. The buffet was well stocked with plenty of hot food choices, cold meats and cheeses, different types of bread and pastries, cereals, yoghurt, fruit, and so on. I had a couple of bowls of muesli with yoghurt and some small pastries and a bread roll. We ate outside in the fresh cool air of the morning on a pleasant patio area bordered by shrubs and facing an interesting old building which I looked up and found to be a high school.

After breakfast I had time to do some stretches and exercises before showering and getting ready to head to the DIN office for the ISO meeting. It’s only a few minutes walk away. We had a nice meeting room with modern equipment, but it seemed the room didn’t have air conditioning. The windows were wide open with a warm wind blowing in. The wind grew stronger over the day, and when I checked Berlin weather it said there was a gale warning current for this area of Germany. It got really strong by the late afternoon, with wind whistling through the ajar windows we had in the meeting room.

The morning was a plenary session devoted to the entire Technical Committee 42 Photography, which is a lot of administrative stuff. Then we got into the Working Group 18 meetings on Digital Photography, while the print photography experts split off for their own working group discussions. We also had administrative work to begin, before the first technical session in the afternoon, on image information capacity.

Lunch was supplied in the foyer right outside our meeting room, with a selection of sandwiches, small bites such as meatballs and some sort of cheesy nuggets, a selection of German cakes, and also churros for some reason. Also on food, I searched for some places for eat dinners this week, looking for German restaurants with vegetarian options, and also good places for vegetarian food. The vegetarian options at German style restaurants tend to be a bit underwhelming, so I wanted to also find something with good vegetarian food. I found a very nice looking place and made a booking for Thursday night as a surprise for my wife.

After the technical session I had to attend the Chair Advisory Group meeting as the head of delegation for Australia. This is an administrative group dealing with overall matters for the entire technical committee. We had a report on work done since the last plenary meeting two years ago on defining more diverse skin tones for photographic testing, discussion of the next plenary meeting in two years to be held in the USA, and some other topics.

After that I returned to the hotel and met up with my wife, who had been busy sketching things while exploring the neighbourhood today. We went out for dinner to a nearby place called Faustus Schnitzelhaus, which I’d found while searching during the meeting. On the way we stopped briefly to loo at the bakery right next door to the hotel, which my wife had told me I needed to see. They had a big range of delicious looking breads and cakes, and I bought a streuselschnecke for dessert later. My wife had a vegetarian flammkuchen, while I tried a veal schnitzel with fried potatoes and mushroom sauce.

The food was really good and the atmosphere was nicely wood-panelled and traditionally German. The place was also busy with customers, both tourists and locals, which was a good sign. The schnitzel was excellent and very filling.

We returned again to our hotel for the night. Hopefully to sleep a little better and get fully adjusted to the time zone.

Europe trip day 2: Arrival in Berlin

While waiting for our connecting flight from Singapore to Frankfurt, I checked the departures and found that it had been delayed by 35 minutes. I hoped that this didn’t presage another 25-hour delay like when we travelled to Frankfurt three years ago! An announcement came over the PA system, that our flight was delayed because they changed the plane, presumably for mechanical reasons. So with the early arrival into Singapore and the late departure, we had about an hour more time here than we expected.

There were no further delays, and at the appointed time we left for the departure gate, cleared through another security screening, and boarded the plane.

Our flight from Singapore was half an hour longer than the scheduled flight time, because of having to route around various conflict zones such as Iran and Ukraine. Apparently Donald Trump decided to bomb Iran while we were flying right past it, so that might have complicated matters. Added to the half hour late departure, we arrived in Frankfurt almost an hour later than scheduled, touching down at exactly 08:00.

We got off the plane very quickly, and it looked like everyone ahead of us was either continuing on the same flight to New York or transiting elsewhere, as we were the first ones to go up the escalators to the customs and exit areas. However we weren’t the only flight to arrive at this time and there was a long queue for the border control checks for non-EU citizens. The EU passport holders whizzed through automated gates while we had to wait with everyone else in a long queue to be manually processed. The border officers took their time with some people so the queue moved very slowly.

While we were waiting a few passengers came through behind us, desperately waving boarding passes for connecting international flights, which meant they had to clear immigration and get to their gates for flights leaving very soon. Staff ushered them through, jumping the queue ahead of the res of us, meaning even more waiting time. Eventually we got to the front and the official didn’t even ask us anything, but merely stamped our passports and waved us through. We’d seen them ask previous people detailed questions about there they were travelling and staying and so on, and having to show them things on their phones – presumably hotel bookings or something. Once through there was more walking. Frankfurt Airport is huge and there’s a lot of distance to be covered. We went through customs and ignored the badge claim area, heading to the train station.

There I used a machine to buy tickets to Berlin. It was 09:15 by this time. There was a departure available quite soon, but I selected a later one, departing at 09:45, to give us time to buy some food and drinks. I also made sure to book seat reservations, so we wouldn’t have to stand up for over four hours to Berlin. The machine printed four dockets: a fare ticket from Frankfurt Airport to Berlin Hauptbahnhof, a credit card receipt for my payment, and two sets of seat reservations, one for a train from Frankfurt to Erfurt, and one for a connecting train from Erfurt to Berlin. I looked at the seat reservations and they seemed to say that the train leaving Frankfurt departed at 10:14, not 09:45 as I’d expected. I thought that was weird, but it seemed like we had more time than I thought.

We relaxed a bit and went to go get some food, going to a chain bakery that we’ve used before at Frankfurt Airport station. We sat down and ate some sandwiches, and also got some extra food in paper bags to take with us. While we were eating, I puzzled over the tickets. I decided to check the route on the Deutsche Bahn app. I searched for trips from Frankfurt Airport to Berlin and found our journey… and discovered that it did indeed leave Frankfurt Airport at 09:45, catching a regional train service to Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, to connect there to the ICE service departing for Erfurt at 10:14!

So all of a sudden we realised that we only had 15 minutes to get from the Frankfurt Airport long distance train station to the Frankfurt Airport regional train station to make the regional train in time to get our express train! I realised this while my wife was buying drinks, and waved her over hurriedly so we could race over to the other train station. She’d only bought a bottle of water and hadn’t had time to get some coffee like she wanted. We ruched across to the regional train station, which fortunately is only a few minutes walk away, but we wanted to make sure we didn’t miss the train as then we’d also miss our express train. We had just enough time for my wife to grab a cup of coffee at a place adjacent to the platform before we went down to get the train.

We caught the regional train, which took 15 minutes to get to Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, giving us an easy 14 minutes to find the long distance platforms and where we needed to be. Along the way, on older Chinese couple asked us in English if they were on the right platform for the train to Leipzig. I looked at the ticket the woman was holding and saw it was the same train as ours, and in the adjacent carriage, so I assured them they were on the right platform and showed them how to find where their car would stop. It turned out our train was a few minutes late, and departed about 10 minutes late.

This was a problem, because our connection in Erfurt gave us only 6 minutes to change trains before the other one departed. So there was a chance we’d miss our connection. But strangely, the train we were on was also going to Berlin! Just by a different route. I’m not sure why the ticket machine decided to have us change trains in Erfurt if the first train was going to Berlin anyway. The only thing I can think of is that beyond Erfurt it didn’t have any seat reservations free, so had to switch us to another train.

As we passed through the other stops, Fulda and Eisenach, the train began making up time. It was a close run thing, and by the time we left Eisenach, the projected arrival time in Erfurt was just 4 minutes late, giving us 2 minutes to make our connection. We were arriving on platform 10 and our connecting train was departing from platform 9, so we were hoping that they would be opposite sides of the same platform and we could dash across and hop on. If we had to race down the length of platform 10 to the end to move across to 9, we might not have had time – assuming they didn’t hold the train for us. As it happened, we pulled in and could see ICE 800, our train, waiting across the platform with doors open. When we stopped, we jumped off and dashed over and into the nearest door. We had to walk down one car to find ours and our seats, and the train had begun moving before we got there. Phew!

While on the trains we I did some sketching, using photos we’d taken on our phones as references. We both drew scenes at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, and my wife added in some drawings of pretzels and the bread rolls we’d bought for lunch. Here’s my sketch:

This train stopped at Halle, Bitterfeld, and Berlin Sudkreuz, before reaching Berlin Hauptbahnhof on time at 14:22. From here we went up I think four flights of escalators to the S-bahn tracks, where we bought short trip tickets (good for trips of 3 stations or fewer) and hopped on the next train heading west, to Zoologischer Garten station. There we finally left our transport and resorted to good old foot power for the final few minutes of our long journey. We walked the few blocks to the Crowne Plaza Berlin City Centre Ku’damm, our hotel for the week.

After checking in we had showers and cleaned up after the long journey. All told it took us just over 32 hours from the time our flight left Sydney to reach our hotel. Reception gave us a voucher for a free drink in the hotel bar, so we went down there and sat for a bit to think about what to do with the remainder of the day while we had our drinks, a rosé wine for my wife and a Bitburger beer for me. We also got some corn chips and salsa as a snack, since we were a little hungry and it was a while before dinner time.

While sitting, she did some sketching and I did some researching to find any sort of tourist attractions within a short walk, and also any restaurants with decent vegetarian options. It seemed that everything that Happy Cow listed was either Indian, East Asian, or Middle Eastern – nothing like a place with traditional German food with vegetarian options. In the end we selected a mid-range looking Italian place, something classier than a cheap pizza or pasta bar, called Il Sorriso (“the smile” in Italian).

Before then we decided to go and get my camera and take a short walk around the block to go past the entrance gates of the Berlin Zoo, which has a couple of photo-worthy sights: a fountain made of fossil-bearing shale, and concrete elephant statues supporting the main gates of the zoo. We also went past the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, or Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, originally built in the 1890s but partially destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943. The damaged shell of the foyer of the original church still stands, with a truncated part of the spire above it, but the main body of the church is gone. A new church was built in front of the old one from 1959, with a bell tower around the back, in the space formerly occupied by the old church. The new church is a striking modernist design, with an almost brutalist concrete exterior made of small square panels. It’s only when you go inside that you realise the panels are a brilliant deep blue stained glass, which flood the interior with blue light, contrasting a giant almost-Art-Deco gold statue of Christ above the altar and multi-coloured, multi-sized circular floor tiles. We went into the new and old churches to look around, before heading back to the hotel.

We had a brief rest, during which we both drew sketches of the church. I finished mine:

Then we emerged again for dinner at Il Sorriso. It looked like a very nice place, and we were hoping to have dinner inside a nicely air conditioned restaurant, as the day was very hot and we’d had enough of the heat. But like last time we were in Germany on a very hot day, we were frustrated by the fact that restaurants here just don’t seem to have air conditioning. We were offered a table outside, but chose one under the roof, although the windows were wide open and it was just as hot as outside.

The food was excellent though. My wife had tagliatelle pesto, and I had ravioli filled with salmon in a lobster sauce with salmon roe. The pasta and sauces were all obviously hand made and were delicious. For dessert I asked with the flavours of the “selection of sorbets of the day” were, and the waiter answered just “lemon”. But that was fine with me and I chose that, while my wife had a caffe latte.

After this we went back to our hotel to turn in for the night and hopefully get a solid sleep and wake up just before breakfast. My wife finished off her sketch with some watercolour. Hers was done from a reference photo from a different angle to mine.

On the way to Europe

Saturday is a travel day. My wife and I got up and packed our bags for our trip to Europe. Our flight was at 3pm, so we planned to leave around 11 o’clock to get there with plenty of time. We had breakfast and cleaned up the house a bit as well as packing, then headed out to get a train to the airport.

We were there with plenty of time after getting through security and the passport check. Our flight left on time and we had some favourable winds so we made good time to Singapore, landing just before 21:30 local time (23:30 Sydney time), so about 10 hours flying time.

Now we have a two hour wait before our flight to Frankfurt, which I think lasts just over 12 hours. Feeling tired since it’s late in Sydney, but hopefully we’ll be able to get some sleep on the next flight.

Europe trip eve

It’s the last day before I fly out to Europe tomorrow. I had a busy day with five ethics classes. I started a new time slot and had one student in a new class. Today’s were my last classes for three weeks, paused halfway through the “Old-Fashioned” topic. I’ve been showing the kids a photo of some telephone directories and asking if they know what they are. So far only one kid had any idea what they were. Most of them guessed things like dictionaries or encyclopaedias. And then when I explained what a phone directory was, they were astonished that such things existed, where you could just look up anybody’s phone number and address if you knew their name.

In between classes I did some travel prep, such as printing out train tickets for our various overland journeys between cities, and checking in online for our flights. Our flight departs at 3pm tomorrow, so we’ll have time in the morning to pack before heading to the airport. We have just over 24 hours of travel time from Sydney to Frankfurt, and then we need to get train tickets to Berlin and travel another 5 hours or so to get there. By the time we get t our hotel we’ll be lucky if it’s under 30 hours of travelling time.

Tonight I’m playing online board games with friends. My wife is out having dinner with her friends, and handing Scully over to one of them to take home, to look after her for the time we’ll be away. I cooked myself some scrambled eggs for dinner, which used up the last of our perishable food, apart from half a carton of milk which we’ll use up for breakfast tomorrow.

This time tomorrow I’ll be most of the way to Singapore!