Around the corner from their house, jewelry and clothing boutiques, candlelit Italian resturaunts, and tanning salons give evidence to Germany's recent rise in prosperity. Their's is a well-kept and tidy apartment they secured through the local tenant's organization is fair sized, given Germany's ongoing housing shortages. A few toys in the corner, and Gisela's knitting of a tiny sweater, give evidence to their one and half year old grandson, Biyon, "the bear," who stays in their care 3 or 4 days a week while one of their grown daughters works as a nurse.

It's the Von Werndorf's generosity that gave the FocalPoint f/8 crew its virtual headquarters during this week in Cologne, and it seemed only appropriate we should ask them about their experience with the "digital revolution" which is occuring right in their own living room.

We prompted Ingolf about how it felt to have us working and living in his living room round the clock for the past 10 days.

"Like having the pixies of Cologne bustling about at night, making little noise yet extremely industrious! You had a job to be done, and that's what happened."

It might be more fitting to describe the Von Wernsdorfs as the true pixies, with food and coffee appearing magically and like clockwork, and Ingolf's swift action when a plug needed to be found, or when furniture had to be moved to accomodate our 8500, or we needed to run our modem lines into their fax machine, or the numerous phone calls they would often have to answer and sometimes even attempt to interpet with their sparse English and our even more sparse German.

"So much concentration (referring to the FocalPoint f/8 team again) and pressure, like putting out a newspaper which you pick up in the morning. It was amazing how with very little sleep the activity continued from one day to the next to the next."

We have to wonder, if perhaps the reference to lack of sleep was also to their own.

Ingolf, who has a PC in another room in his house, regularly checks the Deutsches Bundesbahn schedule off the cd rom the trains supply, and has his own scanner and printer. He also has an avid interest in photography, particularly 3D, and accompanied us on today's trip to Photokina.

"I'm lucky to be able to be right here in Cologne to go to Photokina. This year there is definitely a strong emphasis on digital technologies."

But as for the Internet?

"For us in Germany and just regular people, it is still a bit costly. It's definitely fun to see how wonderfully text and pictures can be combined so that you can have them interact, but computers are for work, not an end in itself. I prefer the personal. To interact with people, my family, my friends."