The meeting is over, and it was a full success!Although the meeting was announced only very shortly ahead, we had a lot of inquiries. Many of those interested could not participate due to the short time until the meeting, but we are planning something big in the near future.

You can find photographs of the meeting on this site, can have a look at our official wheelchairand go back to start-page.

The story of the meeting, in the words of one of the participants, follows here. Just one remark: It was by pure chance that we all used wheelchairs at the meeting. Of course everybody is welcome at our meetings, no matter what disablity he/she brings along.
 

Three of us gathered at a shopping mall in the afternoon.One fellow got to use a chair for the first time. He wasvery happy about it, although he had a bit of a hard timegeting used to the chair. When we were done shopping, wechecked in to our nice accessible room at a hotel justoutside Frankfurt.

The weather was real hot, so I was somewhat disappointed to see that the pool was closed for repairs. After settling down at the hotel we had a practice tour in the neighbourhood where our newcomer friend learned something about the obstacles a chair user has to overcome every day. The evening was rounded off with a nice dinner in a Biergarten.

After haggling a bit with the hotel staff, we managed to save DM 22 per head by not having the hotel breakfast. Instead we took a 10-minute "walk" to a nearby shopping place where we practiced wheeling in escalators and had a go at a self-service breakfast. We noticed how "helpful" people can be, whether you want it or not. After stocking up the hotel fridge with some useful stuff, we went to the Orthopedic museum, where another friend joined us after a long journey. I had a little accident
with my chair, bending a front fork badly out of shape.This turned out to be the ideal place for such a mishap,right outside a major orthopedic workshop. After 15 minutes I was back rolling again.

The museum was most interesting. After wheeling around there for about 1 hour we had lunch in a outdoor cafeteria nearby. We noticed that three wheelchairs around a table looks quite natural in a hospital setting. After a stop and some talking at the hotel, we headed for a large shopping mall north of town. There we were joined by yet another friend. As soon as he was installed in his chair, we went to explore the place. We found that four wheelchairs in one elevator is quite an experience! After doing quite a lot of individual shopping we gathered for dinner at a restaurant with a nice outdoors area. As we were getting used to, it takes some work to find a place that can accommodate four wheelchairs at once.

As the evening grew late, someone had to go and pick up our last visitor at the railway station. A quick decicion was made: We go all together. After some logistic mishaps, leading to a virtual car chase, we found parking places and started unloading our chairs (We were getting good at that by now). Our newcomer friend had no difficulties finding us in the crowd, as five chairs gathered around him! We then had a bit of an adventure trying to use the restrooms, accessible only via a minimal elevator that took one chair at a time.

After that we decided to go for a beer. The best place we could find was only partly accessible, and required some lifting over the entrance stairs. We got back to the hotel around midnight, and went straight on to throwing a room party with plenty of
beer, Jägermeister, and Apfelwein available.

We gathered around the breakfast buffet, and had a planning meeting. Then all of us went to the shopping place, five chairs and all. One friend from abroad had to leave early. After taking some group pictures (to be featured here in due time) the group split up. I had to make a transition back to AB life for some duties in town.I tell you the first minutes of walking after three days in a wheelchair were really shaky!

However the remaining four of us met for dinnerat another very nice Biergarten. The place was crowded, and us getting in and out was a small adventure in itself, but we had surprisingly few stares. After that we went for a stroll in old town Hoechst, ending up at an outdoor icecream café.

All five remaining participants gathered at the hotel breakfastbuffet again to sum up our experiences from this weekend.We had all enjoyed it thoroughly.

We also spent some time thinking up things we wanted to do at the September reunion. Some of us had been out in a chair for the first time, while I, beinga bit experienced, had confirmed my feeling that there is very little I cannot do from my chair.

After some more group photos and the usual check-out formalities we all split up and went back to our usual AB lives.

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