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.