Carolyn and Mark's German Eclipse Adventure

Carolyn and Mark's German Eclipse Adventure Eclipse day at König Ludwig Hotel

König Ludwig II Hotel. Well, the eclipse was sorta the whole point of coming to Germany, besides the symposium and planetarium tour. Our stated goal was to "stay put" for the eclipse. We'd had enough chasing around in cars and buses and boats, in futile attempts to see eclipses in the past (not that last year on the Statendam in the Caribbean was unpleasant!). So, early in the game, we vowed to stay in one place and take our chances. Other members of the symposium clambered aboard buses to various viewing sites -- but, as you can see from the view here, the weather was, shall we say, less than excellent. This was the view from our hotel about an hour before first contact on August 11, 1999. Not too encouraging.

In fact, it was raining through much of the morning. We set up camp at a table under an overhang in front of our hotel. Mark and Volker would occasionally come out from under the shelter to scan the skies. Which way's the sun? At least we had the T-shirts.

Billowing storm clouds kept rolling on through -- alternating with tantalizing clear blue patches of sky. While it was raining for first contact, we did catch a few peeks shortly thereafter.