When German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder makes his seventh official trip to Washington this week he will for the first time in seven years of government not have to find lodging in a hotel.
This time the German delegation has been invited to stay at Blair House, the U.S. government's official guesthouse.
The elegant urban villa is only a short trip to the White House where Schroeder and U.S. President George W. Bush will meet together Monday for three hours as part of the chancellor's brief and likely last visit to Washington before Germany goes to the polls in an early election on September 18.
First in the Oval Office and then as part of a larger circle over lunch, the two leaders will exchange views on a range of international flashpoints and global concerns, including Iran and Afghanistan.
No major results are likely to emerge from the talks with both sides have been playing down expectations about the Washington meeting in the run-up to the Chancellor's visit.
When both the Americans and the Germans agreed on the date for the talks at Bush's visit to the west German city of Mainz in February, Schroeder was probably not been thinking about the prospects of calling an early election.
Schroeder's plans to hold a controversial parliamentary vote of confidence on July 1 meant a long trip by the German delegation from Washington to California had to be called off.
The chancellor wants to orchestrate a loss in the vote of confidence so that he can trigger the early election, which opinion polls currently show is likely to be won by Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrat-led (CDU) opposition.
The plans for the election are also not likely to be left out of the talks between the German and American leaders.
But the German side also acknowledges that everyone up to President knows that Schroeder's chances of re-election are not very high.
Alone out of reasons for the politeness, however, Schroeder's Washington host will not bid farewell to the chancellor with a final "goodbye".
After all, the two men we will see each other again in two weeks at the meeting of the world's leading industrial nations at the Group of Eight summit in Scotland.
Then, however, if everything goes according to his plans, Schroeder will be only acting in the office of Chancellor.
But Schroeder also wants to ensure that the next weeks to mean that after September 18 he will still receive a "Welcome back" from Bush in the White House.
In the meantime, there is the concern in Washington, that once the German election campaign begins in earnest, that the old wounds in the transatlantic relationship over the U.S.-led war in Iraq could break out again.
Despite Bush and Schroeder attempting to finally lay to rest the deep personal animosity between them generated by the war, the present U.S. disaster in the Iraq, however, is pushing the issue back onto the current agenda. <!--page-->
Indeed, the Schroeder visit comes at a time when support in the American population for Bush's Iraq course has fallen dramatically.
Following his meeting with Schroeder, the President wants to try on Tuesday to use a televised address to the nation to win back support for his Iraq policy.
Also Schroeder's challenger at the election, opposition leader Angela Merkel, clearly sees the dangers caused by a Washington visit.
As things stand at present, Merkel has decided against making a short visit to the White House before Germany goes to the polls.
For nearly all candidates for the chancellor's job @ including Merkel's predecessor, Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber @ an excursion across the Atlantic has been an obligatory part of the election campaign programme.
Despite being well-know for his expressions of anti-Americanism, the former leftwing leader of Schroeder's Social Democrats, Oskar Lafontaine also could not, when he was Chancellor-candidate in 1990, resist making a call on the president at that time, George Bush.
It appears that Merkel's advisers are, however, convinced that a meeting with Bush in the White House before the election would be not be particularly helpful.
However, the photos taken with Bush a reminder of the way the CDU chief stood firmly at Washington's side over the war in Iraq.
After a meeting with vice-president Dick Cheney in Washington in February 2003, when Merkel's placed itself openly against Schroeder's anti-war course, popularity ratings sagged at home.
She does not plan to repeat the same mistake now. With the German election campaign gaining momentum, instead of Bush in Washington, Merkel wants to visit a strong opponent of the Iraq war.
With this in mind, a trip to Paris to meet French President Jacques Chirac is now part of her election campaign program.
