Approx. 701 mi (1.128 km) in three days … not bad.

On Sunday we traveled to St. Augustin, which is the oldest city in the US. The heat was stunning!

We then went on to an outlet center near St. Augustine, where the group spent a couple of hours shopping. A small sub-group of quick-shoppers and non-shoppers eventually happened to meet in the food court and remained there for another three hours reading, talking, eating, or taking a nap. Needless to say that I was a part of this group Thanx to Ido for sharing the NYT!

On the next day, we travelled to the capital of the state of Florida, Tallahassee. There we visited the State Capitol (the building on the picture is the Supreme Court of Florida) and David Mica, who is the Executive Directore of the Florida Petroleum Council, introduced us to the procedures of both houses and different aspects of the legislative process on the state level. In the afternoon we stopped at FAVACA, which is an organization doing development work in the Caribbean and the Americas.

On Tuesday we had two interesting lectures by Prof. Loch Johnson, who gave as an overview of U.S. intelligence agencies (in particular the problem of cooperation and the weak position of the DNI) and covert operations of the CIA. As it turned out, Prof. Johnson has visited Innsbruck many times and therefore knows the university and Innsbruck’s mountains very well. I am looking forward to meeting him there!

After this day in Gainesville, we  hit the road again and went to Tampa, where we visited the Port Authority and the U.S. Central Command. We were briefed about the Coalition Forces and their missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ah … what was NATO for again?

On Thursday and Friday we had lectures on regional trade integration (Stephen J. Powell) and Latin America (Terry McCoy). Tomorrow we set out for Miami… So stay tuned and don’t miss the pictures