Kennedyallee



Statue of JFK in front of the iFQ building



The office building in which I work is located at the corner of Godesberger Allee and Kennedyallee. There is a statue of JFK on the corner. My office is on the 6th floor (second row from the top), and is seen here at the far end of the row of windows. 

Getting to work is a snap: I walk through the very posh neighbourhood of Bad Godesberg to the train/subway station, then take the tram three stops. It's fast and inexpensive. The tram stops right in front of the statue of JFK.

Bad Godesberg train station



Bad Godesberg Tower

The view to the South from the iFQ coffee room.

The view from the sixth floor of the iFQ offices. Winter is pretty mild here (damp and cloudy). A sprinkling of slushy snow fell overnight and gave the place a few touches of white.

Bad Godesberg tower

Today was my first day at the office. Everyone is very nice and the facilities are top-notch. It is great to be back in a research environment where people are motivated by ideas. Considering that my last job was in a beige cubicle, it is quite a treat to see a castle from the office window!

We took a high-speed train like this one from the Frankfurt airport to Cologne. It's as sleek inside as it is on the outside. A screen at the end of each wagon displays the next stop, time, and speed: I saw 194 km/h!

People have been talking about a high-speed train from Windsor to Quebec City for decades, but have made no progress. The biggest technical problem is not the snow, but that it would have to cross a provincial boundary, you see.

A

A bateau-mouche on the Rhine getting ready to host a New Year's Eve 2010 party. The train bridge is in the background. (Photo taken with my little Olympus u-5010 using a tripod and quarter-second exposure).

On the plane (an Air Canada Boeing 767) to Frankfurt. Arianne (AKA "Peanut") was fine most of the way but had a meltdown about an hour into the flight. Daddy made everything better. We have been really lucky: nobody caught a cold in the lead-up to the flight, and Peanut didn't have any problems with ear-pressurization.

The Dom cathedral in Koln (Cologne) seen on New Year's Eve 2010. Took 600 years to build it. From an architechtural point of view, I can best summarize the Dom as being both "big" as well as "very pointy". Our hotel is at the left.

Arrived in Bad Godesborg

Well, Christine, Arianne and I have arrived safely in Bad Godesborg (a swish suburb of Bonn). Just getting settled in, but it looks like everything is going to be fine. We`re staying at the Bonnhouse apartments for the next couple of months and maybe longer (you can see it at www.bonnhouse.de).

We`re a block west of the Rhine river in a neighbourhood that used to be full of embassies (when Bonn was the capital of Germany). Now the embassies are gone but the restaurants and cafes remain. There`s a pizza shop just up the street and I`ll use some of my excellent German skills there tomorrow ("Ein pizza, por favor!").

That`s all for now. Picutres coming soon.
-Jeffrey