Posted by Mark Silva at 5 am CDT
STRALSUND, Germany — The Kempinski Grand Hotel in Heiligendamm on the sea draws its name Grand without question. It’s clear why this will serve as the headquarters for next year’s G-8 summit. But for now, this is POTUS central, temporary residence of the president of the United States.
The president is staying in a castle-like white building of four stories facing the sea in a complex of white, mostly four-story buildings assembled around a green lawn facing the Baltic. The well-trimmed grounds are separated from the water and a narrow, gravelly beach by a low seawall. Come ride with me as I provide the “pool report” of the president’s morning movements to my colleagues traveling in Germany. Dan Bartlett, counsel to the president, and assorted members of the National Security Council and White House staff ate breakfast this morning at various tables on a wide patio in front of the restaurant on the green facing the sea, which today was pool-like and placid, before departing for the ceremonial reception of a barrel of herring in the town square of Stralsund. The buffet offered fish, salmon mainly.
A long motorcade of exceptional quality, containing several black 7-series BMW sedans, idled in the driveway in front of the main building and restaurant – and did I mention the spa? The pool inside is of the endless variety, and warm. The sky was cloudless, the air warm and mild, with seagulls circling overhead.
After consuming uncounted gallons of addiction-quality gasoline in the idle mode, the motorcade rolled from the hotel at 8:59 am Heiligendamm time, to the delight of several Heiligendammians assembled in the streets of the small town. It was a brief ride of less than half a mile to helicopters awaiting us in a field just outside the town. The helicopters launched at 9:06 am, and flew low over lovely, nearly flat farmlands occasionally dotted with graceful white wind-turbines. They landed at Stralsund at 9:33 am in the middle of a running track.
Marine One landed at 9:35 on a brick plaza and the president and first lady stepped out and into a limousine for another motorcade ride into town.
“Looks like Waco,” a fellow pooler could be heard to say of the slightly rolling farmland that we rolled through – more windmills. And a few dozen onlookers assembled at one rural crossroad of the motorcade’s path.
As we rolled into Stralsund, the entire route was lined with metal gates on both sides of the street, and many people assembled at many spots hoisting cameras as we wound through the narrow street lined with small and pretty homes of stucco siding and shell-tile roofing. As we got further into town, the street turned to cobblestone and many very large and beautiful homes of stucco, shell with columns on some awaited us. We saw no sign of protest along the route as we wound to the old town hall in the center and stopped at 9:55 am.
We were ushered into the town hall, but not allowed out into the town square.
But we did get a view from a window of a room on the second floor and saw a few hundred people assembled inside metal gates in the center of the cobblestone square. A few in the front waved large American flags on poles. They did not fill the square, which was arranged with wide aisles on all sides. Bush climbed a stage and stood at a podium in the very sun-splashed square shortly after 10 am Stralsund time.
“Guten morgen,” Bush said in his greeting, and the crowd cheered.
“Decades of German people were separated by an ugly wall,” Bush said. “Today, the nation is whole,” he said, and Europe is “free, united and peaceful.”
Proud to call German Chancellor Angela Merkel his friend, he said she has a strong vision and “a humble heart.” Like many others in the international community, he said, he respects her judgment. She also comes from “one of the best parts of Germany,” he said to applause from the town square.
“I bring a message from the American people,” he said. “We’re honored to call the German people our friends and allies.”
Inside the town hall, on the second floor, a guest book was opened on a narrow table inside a room with high ceilings, wide wood-planked floors, a wood paneled ceiling and an opaque skylight. The walls on two sides were arranged with old portraits of what appeared to be former magistrates, the older ones in powdered wigs. The oldest, by my reckoning, was a portrait of D:Nicol Genzkow (sic), with notations of years below, 1540, 1555, 1576.
Twenty men and women walked into the room and stood by one wall of portraits to the side of the low table with the guest book. Another table stood in front of an oil painting of the city’s waterfront on an easel. Four flags stood behind.
At 10:20 a piano struck up in the center hallway, violins chimed in and a soprano sang: “There’s a place for us… There’s a time for us…. Somewhere,” and at this point she was really soaring, with the accompaniment of a small chamber orchestra in this center hall which was just outside the room where Bush and Merkel would hold a press conference. The guest-signing room was off another door into the hall.
We couldn’t see this, but apparently this song was sung in performance for Bush and Merkel, because we heard him thank the band. “Appreciate it,” Bush said.
At 10:23 Bush and Merkel entered the guest-signing room, with the first lady following them. Bush then stood at the head of a short line, him, Merkel, Laura Bush, two other men and one woman, on one side of the table in front of the portrait of the city on the easel. Their host, who appeared to be the mayor and had a beard and considerable girth stood on the other side of the table and read a very lengthy greeting in German.
An interpreter, a woman, stood behind Bush and whispered the translation in his ear. Bush wore a dark charcoal suit, black shoes, light shirt and dark blue tie. The first lady wore a dark navy suit of long blouse and matching skirt and open-toed brown shoes with a medium-sized heel. They stood with their hands folded in front as the host droned on.
“Thank you, sir,” Bush said at the end of the reading. He walked to the signing table and sat down to sign the guest book. He stood up and then his wife signed it standing. They started to greet the 20 guests as we were hauled out of the room, so we don’t know if they launched into a debate about the war in Iraq, and doubt they did.
“Moon River,” the soprano in the hallway sang as we were ushered out into the center atrium of the town hall. We stood on the same second floor with old wide planked floors on a landing with thick carved railings and dark red brick walls that encircled the open center of the building, with a modern steel and glass skylight lighting the center.
Bush and Merkel strolled out into the atrium and walked the length of the landing, sans first lady, and into a room with an old meeting table.
They sat in two dark green leather arm chairs arranged in front of a fireplace in the room, which Merkel explained is the mayor’s working room.
“It’s a little warm for a fire,” Bush said jokingly, and indeed there was none in the fireplace.
“It’s beautiful,” Bush said of the room, and that’s all we got of this meeting between Merkel and Bush before we were led out to hold in the press conference room filling with reporters.
And the press conference will get underway soon. And that’s it from the pool.
