Patrick Korner: Better Late Than Never? AKA Essen 2007 Review

Between Real Life™, two extra weeks of vacation in Europe and the time it’s taken to actually play through a pile of the games I returned with from Essen, it seems like it’s been forever since I actually wrote something.

Oh, it HAS been forever?

Oops.

Never mind, then.  Um, sorry I’m late?  In any case, rather than the usual blow-by-blow account of what I did and what I played and who wore what and what the smoke level in the fairgrounds was like and, and, and… Yeah.  Rather than that, this article will hit the high / low points of my trip, vignette-style, so as to give you an overall flavour of the fair without having to wait for days before the end of the story is told.  So, off we go.

The Trip

Flying to Germany was a little different this year than previous years, for two main reasons:

1) This year I have enough frequent flyer status to use the various express lines / waiting lounges (hooray), and

2) This year I took my family along with me, which includes my wonderful wife (after all, it was her idea to go to Germany for our 10 year wedding anniversary) and my wonderful daughter (who is 4).

So the trip was kind of an exercise in extremes: Comfort in the airports (Comfy chairs! Fast lines through security!) and discomfort in the airplanes (9.5 hrs in a metal tube with a four-yearold! Who threw up on final approach to Dusseldorf!).  Nonetheless, we managed to touch down at Dusseldorf in one piece.

And then came the cab ride.

Now, I’ve never taken my daughter along in a cab here in Canada before, so I have no idea if the standards are the same, but my wife kind of had a hard time with her little princess sitting on a non-strapped-in booster seat in the back of a BMW taxi screaming down the Autobahn at 140+ km/h.

Can’t say I blame her.

At long last we make it to the hotel (the Holiday Inn Express) and gratefully peel ourselves off the seat and manhandle our luggage into the hotel.  We’re here!

The Hotel

I’ll cut to the chase: The HI Express is a great hotel for Essen.  Reasonably priced (compared to the other hotels in Essen proper), well-situated (less than 5 min walk from Berliner Platz subway station, which means a straight shot to the Convention Centre), and—oh, yeah—some of the greatest after hours playing space to be found in the city.

Since the hotel does a free breakfast buffet in the mornings (which, I might add, was some kind of great in and of itself), all that table space is available for gaming in the evenings.  And the wait staff was VERY kind when it came to turning the mood lighting up to game-friendly levels.  Not to mention looking the other way when we brought bottles of pop in from elsewhere (which, if you haven’t been to Europe before, is at right about the same social taboo level as audibly farting in an elevator, then cackling with glee about it).

Oh, and there were lots of gamers in the building, from Stefan Brück of alea fame to Ted Alspach of Bézier Games to lots of other folks from around the world—I think I met folks from England, Holland, Germany, the USA and elsewhere while gaming down there.

I’ll be staying there again, if (cross fingers) I get to go again some time.

Downtown

Now, while I was busy gaming up a storm, my wife had to find things to do with my daughter.  And before you get all up in arms about me abandoning her in a foreign country, rest assured that was the deal before we left.  I get to do Essen, in exchange she gets to spend another two weeks in Europe going sightseeing.  Seemed fair to me…

Anyway, one of the main draws was the downtown shopping core – ‘cause if there’s one thing my little girl likes to do (my daughter, that is, not my wife), it’s shop.  For toys.  Preferably Barbies or ponies of some sort, but candy will do in a pinch.

Not a problem—the subway line goes right through the Essen Hauptbahnhof (main train station), so it was easy to get there and back.  Right?  Yes, but…

As luck would have it, on the second-last day in Essen, we wandered off past Berliner Platz to see what was on the far side of the main road.  Hmm. Going just past this department store takes us to this cool-looking shopping street.  Sweet!

Hey, they even have the same store here as the one my daughter likes to go to the most!  Sweet!

Hey, something’s kinda familiar about this place…

D’oh.

Good thing I had my wife taking the ten-minute subway ride to downtown instead of the five-minute walk, eh?  Sigh.  This is the danger of mental maps: You get these little ‘islands’ that make sense, but there’s no connection between them.  I could get to the shopping district from Hauptbahnhof, and I knew how to get to Hauptbahnhof from the hotel, but I never put together how to get to shopping from the hotel.  Sheesh.

Grugapark

I can’t really say too much about this, except that it’s apparently a very cool, very big park.  I’ve never done anything but look at the main gate while on my way into the fair (which is right next door), but my family spent a couple of days there and apparently it’s like the Coolest.  Park.  Ever.  Petting zoo, owl aviary, swimming pool, playgrounds (indoor and outdoor), tons of walking paths, etc. etc.—you get the idea.  I guess next time I’ll have to make time for this place too.

Oh, who am I kidding.  The fair’s the thing, right?

Spiel 2007

By now, most of you will have read more Spiel reports than you can shake a stick at, so there isn’t much I can add, probably.  Instead, here’s a quick summary of my fair experience, summarized in handy Dos and Don’ts form for easy future reference:

DO go to Essen at least once in your life.  It’s well worth the trip, and this year the smoking ban indoors really made a difference.  I think I gave up only three weeks of my life to second-hand smoke instead of six.

DO troll the used game vendors as early as possible.  Sure, Funagain might have gotten there before you (and in some cases contacts the resellers months in advance so good luck getting that 5€ copy of Chinatown, buddy), but you never know when something lucky will happen to you, like opening up a cheap copy of Sternenhimmel to find a signed copy of the limited edition 13th Star Sign staring back at you.

(We pause this list for yet another rendition of the Snoopy Happy Dance ©)

DON’T get suckered by the smaller publishers and their pretty, shiny boxes.  Why pay a premium to beta test when any good games will get major label releases down the road anyways?  Well, unless the games are from Japon Brand and you really, really want to make sure you get the next Fairy Tale.  Or you just want to read the rules and try to decide whether laughing or crying is the appropriate response.  Completely unrelated question: Anybody wanna buy a copy of Fallingwater?  Er, Failingwater?  Erm, whatever the heck it’s called?

DO play lots of games at the booths, especially those games from larger German publishers that you’ll likely wait to buy until you get back home anyways so as to save valuable luggage space for those pretty shiny boxes (see above).  However, if doing this with Greg Schloesser you must remember to either duct tape his mouth shut (remember to provide a pad for game-related communication) or book an extra couple of hours to account for all of Greg’s fans / friends / foes coming by to press the flesh and chat with the man.

DO hook up with Dale Yu for at least part of his now-patented ‘walk around and give as many publishers copies of my business card as possible’ routine.  Not only is Dale an ace negotiator when it comes to things like volume discounts, he tends to wear things such as Cincinnati Bengals jerseys, which make him easy to pick out of a crowd again should you get separated.

DON’T play smaller publisher abstract games.  Seriously.  I mean, if you do you’ll just find that games like Quinamid or Katalon are friggin’ great and you’ll end up spending that much more money on them (not to mention bringing a few more boxes to the luggage tetris party).  You’ve been warned!

DO buy anything Eggertspiele releases on sight.  Don’t bother playing them, you know they’re good.  When’s the last time you could read something like that for, say, Hans im Glück and find yourself nodding in agreement?  Exactly.

DON’T bother asking what the price of that minty-fresh copy of Full Metal Planete in the used dealers area is.  The old adage of “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it” holds true, my friend.  It sure does.  Oh, 180€ in case you just had to know.

DO make time to wander into the Press Room during the fair.  Not only do you get to have great fun chatting with luminaries such as Mike Siggins between show floor forays, but the rest of us with Press Passes will get to laugh as security hauls your sorry ass back out the door again.

DON’T go into Hall 6 (also known as the Freaks n’ Geeks Hall, the Origins Hall, the RPG Hall, etc.).  Well, unless you happen to like young women dressed as elves and fairies, which I suppose would be a valid reason.  Or you happen to have a hankering to try Mead.  Or, more likely, you really, really wanted a copy of the fifth army for Neuroshima Hex! and hey, whaddaya know, Portal happens to be in Hall 6.  Right next to a fairy selling Mead.

DO use the cash machine right outside the main doors to the fairgrounds.  That way, I’ll have someone to laugh at as I come back from the other, super-secret cash machine located not that far away.  Oh, I already spilled its location elsewhere on BGN?  Drat.

DO punch out all the cardboard bits to all the new games you bought at the fair.  Not only will you save valuable luggage weight and open yourself up to the miracle that is box-in-box nesting, but you’ll discover a sure-fire cure for insomnia and leave the cleaning staff with some very odd garbage contents.

DO play as many of your new games as possible after you get home.  Not only will you be the most popular guy in your game group for a while, but playing the games gives you a nice cast-iron excuse for why you haven’t written about your Essen trip yet…

And that’s all for now, folks.  Next week (cross fingers) I’ll have capsule comments of ten words or fewer on all the new games I’ve played thus far.  And maybe a photo or two from my trip through other parts of Europe—I’ve heard that vacation pictures are always very popular and a good way to drive site traffic up, so I’m happy to do my part!  Yeah!

See you then!
pk

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