Germany, 1998

Freiburg. Sitting at a small restaurant having dinner-Jacob and I are splitting an order of Wiener Schnitzel with the salad going to me and the rest to him. Got to the hotel (Markgräfler Hof) fine although it turned out to be quite a walk from the train station. The room is very nice with private bath, telephone and cable TV.

Hotel - Beer Garden

6/20/98 Schloßberg overlooking Freiburg. We're having a drink at a beer garden. Amazingly hot for Germany, must be over 90 degrees. I tried to connect to the Internet last night but the Compuserve dialer didn't recognize the German dial tone. I plan to try again today from Libbie. Had no luck from Paris-the phone was hard-wired to the wall. I had thought about bringing along an acoustic coupler but that seemed like overkill.

Schloßberg panorama
(in QuickTime VR - requires QuickTime plug-in)

This morning I checked in for the ED-MEDIA conference and we went grocery shopping. Given the high restaurant prices, we'll probably be fixing our own meals quite a bit.

6/21/98. Just got back from a Java seminar at the ED-MEDIA Conference, not one of the better workshops I've been to. While I was there, Jacob watched Germany play Jugoslavia to a tie in the World Cup. Now we're having a drink at a beer garden around the corner from the hotel, waiting for our food to arrive.

6/23/98. At a popular Freiburg beer garden just down the street from our hotel, the Feierling Brewery. Just got back from the youth hostel, where we got id. cards. We're starting out on our hike tommorrow and plan to stay at a couple of youth hostels.

Yesterday I gave my presentation at the Conference. It went fine, although 25 minutes was barely time to do anything in. In general most of the sessions I attended were disappointing, long on overheads and Powerpoint, short on demos. Most presentations were theoretically oriented.

Last nignt, I finally got CompuServe to work, had to dial long distance to Karlsruhe, still cheaper than calling back to the ISP in Richmond. The national, toll-free number is apparently only for initial sign-up to Compuserve.



Europe, 1998 - Gee-Jays - Bob Godwin-Jones