Patrick Korner: Hotel WiFi And Other Fibs

Well, I’m back from Essen.  Did you all enjoy my on-the-scene reports as much as I enjoyed writing them?

No?

Well, that’s because of two things:

1) I didn’t write them, and

2) You didn’t read them.

Well.

Why did these two things come to pass?  Simple:  No internet in the hotel room (contrary to the hotel’s website!) and, stupidly for me, no AC adapter that would let me charge my laptop and get it to somewhere that DID have ‘net access.  Sigh.

So, prepare for shock! (As the Media Mogul sign said).  Here comes the first installment in my post-event Wrapup - in other words, a more traditional Essen report.

Part 1: Leaving on a Jet Plane

The trip to Germany was fairly uneventful, save the fact that my tardy booking forced me to layover in Calgary for a couple of hours instead of flying to Frankfurt directly from Vancouver.  Sigh.  The flight was pretty full, but overall not too bad.  Hey, I even managed to sleep for about an hour or so - in 10 minute increments.  This even with a sleeping pill.  Planes hate me.

Frankfurt is a funny airport.  It’s huge.  No, bigger than that.  It’s bleedin’ enormous, and the signs really could be a little clearer.  But what’s great about German customs (as opposed to, say, US Customs where they do everything but throw the cold water and glaring lights into the interrogation mix) is that when clearing my way into the country, I said this many words to the customs agent:

Zero.

And how many did he say to me?

Zero.

A completely silent exchange.  I hand over my Canadian passport, he looks at it, looks at me, stamps it, smiles, and hands it back.  And that’s it.

Man, it was almost deflating - no chance to get my German practice underway quickly!

The other thing about Frankfurt is that the airport has these enormous, football-field-long underground walkways with moving sidewalks in them that shuttle you from place to place.  Very fun, but less so when you feel you’re in danger of missing your flight.  But I do make it to my gate in time for the flight to Dusseldorf, which happens to be on an Airbus A300 behemoth - in other words, a 300+ seat aircraft for a 25 minute flight with about 50 people on board.  Lufthansa is either really wanting to make sure you get your legroom, or it’s a repositioning flight that has some logic in someone’s eyes somewhere.

The flight was uneventful, and the cab ride to the Hotel U (yes, just U) was as well - apart from the fact that the driver had no flippin’ idea where a Hotel U might be located.  So enter something I haven’t seen before - a GPS-based navigation system, with voice prompts, built into the CD player.  Simply pop in the navigation CD, type in where you want to go, and a nice German lady starts telling you where to go.  Sweet.  And, of course, the cabs in Germany are all made by Mercedes Benz, which means that we were zipping along the Autobahn at 160 km/h… Whee!

So, I get to the hotel and get my first unpleasant shock.  I’m on the fourth floor.  And there’s no elevator.  And my bag is heavy (did I mention I’d brought several hundred Magic cards along to try and sell at the fair?).  So, one hernia-promoting trip up the stairs later, I kind of want to take a nap.  It has been about 17 hours of travel, after all.

But no!  Intrepid (and foolish) hero that I am, I head out to try and get downtown on the train.  And I make it after only one wrong way.  Sadly, the ‘deals’ to be had downtown are less than amazing, and I wind up heading to the fair on setup day to see what I can see.

And who do I see at the Rio booth but Rick, Valerie Putnam, John Palagyi and Brian Yu, with Jay and Scott hovering above - apparently I’m not the only one wanting to play games.  Valerie and co. have also just arrived, so it’s good to know I’m not the only one rather, um, tired.  I manage to get my first game of the fair in - two rounds of Medici vs. Strozzi against Rick.  Rick is not worried about using my sleep deprivation to his advantage, so thankfully the game wasn’t completed and won’t therefore be represented in the Great Book of Gaming Results (tm)… But!  It’s a really cool take on Medici and well worth checking out.  I think I will need to work on the bidding aspect of the game a little - it was very difficult to re-think my value system from Medici, where I often lie in wait until towards the end to pick up goods cheap.  In this game, the round ends as soon as one player has filled their holds, which means the competition is fierce right from the get-go and you can’t wait around for a steal.  I think it’s a good game, though, and well worth picking up.

After the game, Rick had to head out, so I wandered the halls a little, getting my bearings (and mostly figuring out important things like where the washrooms were, where the major publishers were, where the used dealers were).  Upon completion of my first circuit, I ran into Alan Moon at the Rio area, who was interested in checking out some of the halls himself - so off we went.  Chatting with Alan about the gaming industry is a real treat - he’s seemingly connected to just about everyone, isn’t afraid to offer his opinions, and will often have stories to back them up.

The used dealers, as others have already written, are getting a little annoying.  They know what their games are worth, and so the Super Huge Deal (tm) isn’t often to be found any more.  Sigh.  I did end up picking up one game for a friend, but compared to last year’s used game buying frenzy, I was much more modest with my purchases.  Interesting side note: El Grande was getting a lot of face time - just about every dealer had a huge stack of ‘em towards the front of their booth.  Why?  No idea - must have something to do with it finally being out of stock.

After saying my goodbyes to Alan (and regretting the fact that I was too tired to do any gaming tonight), I took the train back to my hotel.  Unlike Rick, who stays in the posh comfort of a hotel within strolling distance of the Messe, I was in the Hotel U (remember, the one the cabbie had no clue about).  And getting there from the fair meant taking three trains in all - two trams and a subway.  45 minute trip all told, and on the way back I realized I’d done something wrong on the way in.  You see, in Essen area you buy your ticket from a machine.  And that’s great - I’d done that on my way in.  But what I’d not noticed is that the ticket you get from the machine isn’t actually valid - to validate (and therefore start the 90 minute clock ticking), you need to stamp said ticket with one of the little validators in the train.  Which means that I rode in for free and used my now-stamped ticket to ride back.  Sorry, Essen, I owe you a little over 2 Euros!

Back in the hotel, it’s time for sleep.  And sleep, blessed sleep, finally comes.  Tomorrow is Wednesday, and I will be fully recharged and ready to go.

pk

© 2006 Patrick Korner

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Comments:

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Hi Patrick! It doesn’t matter that you are a little late with your reports due to the missing internet connection. Now Essen is over and the essen-report-addicts (like me) are a little nervous that there are no live reports around. So it’s nice from you to step in. I’m from germany and for me it is very funny to read all those things the visitors found to be interesting in germany. The tram, the ticket system, the autobahn, what to eat (Bratwurst mit Brötchen). Some day I have to visit canada to check out what the differences are. By the way: I was in Essen, too and I had to go home by car (three hours to the east). Our top speed was 180km/h. In a french car.. Posted by Christian Becker on Oct 25, 2006 at 08:57 AM | #

Speaking of trains, I found out after riding into downtown 3 different times (and paying the 2,10 Euro each way) that an exhibitor pass gives you free unlimited access to the public transportation (trams and buses)!  So, Essen, you owe me a little over 9 Euros--that’s another small card game! Posted by Valerie Putman on Oct 25, 2006 at 02:51 PM | #

Where / from whom did you find out that you get to ride the public transit for free?  Is that what is printed in small print at the bottom of the ticket that I’ve never bothered to read since I can’t read German? Posted by Dale Yu on Oct 25, 2006 at 05:36 PM | #

I was at the tourist information booth and they said something about the single day passes also giving you access to the public transit system, but when I asked about my four day pass they said, no.  Now, this exchange was also in German so I may have missed the finer points. Posted by Mike Shaver on Oct 26, 2006 at 12:04 PM | #

Its always free transport for the exhibitor pass its in the large pack they send with the ticket. maybe its the english small print thats the problem Posted by Antony Brown on Dec 4, 2007 at 05:42 AM | #

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