Second Day – Solo in Germany

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Frankfurt, Germany

In 2015, I visited Frankfurt by myself because John was too busy with his company. I really wanted to go right at that time, early September because that would allow me to help celebrate my sister’s 50th birthday and my mother’s 80th birthday at the annual family reunion hosted by Klaus’ family. I would only stay a little over a week and managed to see different family members every day. My calendar was packed! Unfortunately, I didn’t take any notes, and some of my photos were lost along with my phone (always back up your phone!!!), so it is difficult to fill in these entries so much later with so little to work with. 

On my second morning in Frankfurt, I headed to my mother’s again for a visit. This time, I decided to take a stroll down to the Main and across the Eiserne Steg.

Caroline Wise in Frankfurt, Germany

This was my best attempt at a selfie. The weather was nice enough not to need a sweater, even though it was early.

Frankfurt, Germany

I then walked across the Romerberg, back towards Zeil and Konstablerwache.

Frankfurt, Germany

I remember looking for a mailbox and finding one here at Liebfrauenberg.

Frankfurt, Germany

This is the view from upstairs in Zeil Gallerie, a shopping mall on Zeil, looking West. This was one of the few places I found in Frankfurt that had free WIFI and I stopped here a lot to chat with John.

Later that day, while visiting my mother, it turned out that her eye infection was getting much worse. Stephanie and I decided to bring her to the emergency room at the eye clinic and they admitted her. This took most of the rest of the day because the waiting room was packed.

First Day – Solo in Germany

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Caroline Wise in Frankfurt, Germany

In 2015, I visited Frankfurt by myself because John was too busy with his company. I really wanted to go right at that time, early September because that would allow me to help celebrate my sister’s 50th birthday and my mother’s 80th birthday at the annual family reunion hosted by Klaus’ family. I would only stay a little over a week and managed to see different family members every day. My calendar was packed! Unfortunately, I didn’t take any notes, and some of my photos were lost along with my phone (always back up your phone!!!), so it is difficult to fill in these entries so much later with so little to work with. 

I landed in Frankfurt! What a relief after almost missing my connecting flight in D.C. because I thought I’d have to change terminals, which ended up not being true. I was the second last person to enter the plane before the doors closed! Continuing on that theme, in Frankfurt, I thought my bag was lost in transit for probably 10 minutes until I realized that the lonely black bag circling the baggage carousel was actually my red bag, flipped upside down. Somehow, I had never noticed that our bag wasn’t red on all sides. I texted John the good news while I was still able to use the airport WIFI.

Frankfurt, Germany

Since I landed at around 7.30 in the morning, I had told my sister and brother-in-law not to pick me up from the airport and headed towards my mother’s apartment using public transport. On the way, I bought my first day-ticket for public transport at the RMV store at Hauptwache.

Frankfurt, Germany

Afterward, I went for a walk past Hauptwache Cafe to the nearest post office to buy stamps. Businesses were just opening and I was amazed to see that the street cleaners are still using old-timey brooms made with twigs instead of leaf blowers.

Frankfurt, Germany

I had promised John I would write a card every day, and I already had one ready to go, which I had picked up at the Phoenix airport.

Frankfurt, Germany

Next, I strolled down Zeil towards Konstablerwache. Before I hopped on the train to Bornheim, I took a good look at all the fresh local produce for sale at the market.

Frankfurt, Germany

This is Saalburgstrasse. My mother’s house is the somewhat bluish one about four houses down on the right. Considering it had been cloudy when I landed, I was happy to see blue sky.

Jutta Engelhardt in Frankfurt, Germany

My mom was so happy to see me. We had a lot to talk about and eventually decided to celebrate with a slice of plum cake at Café Eifler at the corner of Saalburgstrasse and Berger Strasse.  I love plums (specifically, damson plums), and plum cake was very much in season and on offer everywhere. I ended up eating a slice just about every day I was in Germany.

It got late when I finally got to the Engelhardt’s, where we looked at their vacation photos (they had just returned from a trip to Japan!) and then fixed up my bed in the attic, where I sadly went to sleep by myself.

Reappearance – TimefireVR

JWise TimefireVR

Cyberpunk in TimefireVR

It’s been a long time since I’ve penned anything other than business documents. In the intervening months since last I dropped words, Timefire has gone through some changes like so many start-ups do.

One giant change is that we’ve grown. A year ago, we were six; today, we are nearly twenty full-time creators. We changed our name and changed it back again and that’s after we had already done that before.

Like many other early VR adopters, it appeared to us that Virtual Reality was nearly at our doorstep. In reality, it started to look like a fast-moving target that might find a consumer release in some distant future (fortunately not another decade or two like back in the 1990s). Now it's said we’ll see the first consumer products by the end of this year, go Valve/HTC and Samsung.

While Samsung rolls out the new Note 5 and GearVR for the general public, we are not building for mobile unless you consider the work we’ve been doing with 360 videos. While we all love immersive 360-degree video, and it will find its place in our VR world and our production skills, it is an explorable interactive Virtual Reality that we are looking forward to the most.

And this is where our efforts have been focused.

We had to scale. Our original plan and budget said to stay small and spend slowly, but back then, there was just Oculus, no Facebook, no Magic Leap, no billions of dollars being spent wildly. Then, in a burst toward the latter part of 2014, the VR renaissance kicked into high gear and made the quantum leap. Either we adapted to what was happening or we'd be irrelevant before we saw the light of the display mounted an inch from our face.

A programmer goon or two joined a database guru and started designing the backend that would drive our customer sign-ups and allow us to build all types of interesting new tools and functionality. More artists came on board, including a terrific digital sculptor, a level developer worth his weight in gold, a dedicated texture artist, and other creators who helped round out our growing team.

With this heft of creative skills, we were now able to deploy, it was time to make some big changes to our world. We put our noses down and went dark. We have a lot to do.