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.