Spiel '09... Essen!
And now it's time to talk about Essen!
Leaving Interlaken in the dark of the morning, I had one train change in Mulheim, and then on to Essen. Due to the construction at the station I kind of got turned around exiting, and ended up walking out the wrong door, so unfortunately I had to drag my stuff around to the hotel, but these things happen. After getting up to the room and settling in, I began the Quest For Cash.
The Spieltage, you see, is mostly cash-only. So if you want to get the newest games you've got to have the euros. I had come into Italy with a decent amount of cash, with the intention of spending a little and taking some out of the ATM as I went, but (something I haven't really covered during these reports yet) my card wasn't working as an ATM card. In Italy, I tried several machines, then called the bank (I have an international collect number, but apparently I don't stay in hotels where people understand WTF a "collect" or "reverse charges" call is, nor do they understand "operator", so I ended up just paying for the calls myself) but they said they never saw ATM access on their end. I also had Swiss Francs but figured I'd get more: same story in Switzewrland. The card worked as a credit card, though and the Swiss were more than willing to take my money that way, so it wasn't really an issue there. So we get to Essen and I'm low on Euros but still unable to use the ATM. There's a Western Union across the street from my hotel though, so I figure I'll use the Visa part of it to get my cash. I go in, no dice. Back to the room, back on the phone. This agent does some magic and thinks she's figured it out. Back to the Western Union, no dice. Back in the hotel, on the phone the next agent decides that the only way it'll work is to raise my daily limits, so I will have to wait until CA opens at 7:00am. Blah.
Well, I did have some cash left so I figured I'd hit the fair. Four quick U-Bahn stops later I was in boardgaming heaven at the Messe!! First cruise around the halls, I picked up a couple of games with my remaining cash that were absolute #1 on my priority list. At this point I was now committed: a few euros were all that was left so I needed the bank to come through. As you know, I do like games. This particular game.... not so much. I also cruised by the Rio Grande booth and the BGG booth to say hello to people and to get my bearings on things, as well as to share my cash pain with some fellow American travelers.
Taking my haul back to the hotel, I called the bank again and we got the limit adjusted (well, she said it already WAS adjusted so I don't know why she said we needed to have me call back), and back at WU I tried it again, and magically, I GOT MONEY! The lady behind the counter was happy for me. :)
So, back to the fair and time to buy more games. This I did, with abandon! I also hung out with the BGG crew a bit and arranged to catch up with them for dinner. Then I headed back to my hotel to drop off the afternoon's haul and to get the final insult: an email waiting for me from the bank saying that they'd placed a hold on my card due to a suspicious transaction: THE CASH I'D BEEN ARGUING TO GET ALL WEEK. O.M.F.G. As soon as I get back to the US where it's a free call, I'm SO calling to complain. They never did seem to manage to figure out why the card never worked as an ATM card either, so we'll be discussing that as well.
Anyway, the place they said for dinner was not where they said it was, but fortunately I ran into the gang and we ended up at a decent Italian Tapas place (yeah, Italian food and Tapas in Germany.... don't hurt yourself trying to figure that out) where I had a really good pasta-with-turkey dish. By that time it was late and bed was calling, so I hopped the U-Bahn home.
Friday morning... my first full day at the fair! I'm not even going to try and remember where I went at what times or where I bought what. There's so much to see and do and so many little things that happen along the way that it's a blur in some ways: I talked to people and wandered the halls a lot, went back to the hotel room with games at lunch and relaxed a bit, then finished out the day. The highlights included demos of Power Grid Factory Manager, some abstract called Avalam that I just kind of got roped into (wasn't bad), Fzzzt!, and at the end of the day El Paso. Oh, I managed to get the Ghost Stories: White Moon expansion with all of the goodies too, win!
Friday night a giant group was planning on dinner and games at the Hotel Arosa but after 30 minutes of no service we bailed for a steakhouse that they knew. When that turned out to not have the room, they decided on a Chinese place across the street, but two of the others and I had had enough chaos so we went to the pizza place we were supposed to have gone the night before and had a FANTASTIC dinner full of fun conversation and good pizza. A great way to end the day, but again too late to really game.
Saturday, the mechanics were much like Friday: get up, have breakfast, mush into the hall with the crowd, try to get demos, succeed sometimes, fail sometimes. Walk the hall, buy stuff, take games home at lunch.... okay, well then things got different. I had been buying... well... a lot. More than I have in years past. Perhaps more than I should have. But the relief of having cash and the fact that I had to skip last year made me kind of stupid. So at lunch on Saturday I went over to the Galleria Kaufhof and bought a large football duffel bag. Yes, I had come with one suitcase packed inside another. I still needed the bag. Really.
After lunch back to the show for more wandering, demos, a few small purchases (card games are tiny, as are game bits, right?), and so on. Demos over the course of the day were Endeavor (really liked) and Last Train to Wensleydale (loved the mechanics, didn't care for the components: the counters need to be stacked and were too light and small, and the train track pieces were larger than some of the spaces on the board: sloppy IMO).
I also over the course of the day learned about another game group in Southern California that I didn't know about, but many of them were at Essen and I liked hanging out with them so I'm definitely going to try and make it up to one of their meetings!
Dinner this time was another crew, which was neat. We went to Subway because we were planning on gaming. Yes, Subway. Now, I prefer to try local places as much as possible when I travel, but I was with the group so I did this: it's the first time I've ever been to an American chain outside of America... it was kind of surreal. The menu was mixed-language and there were regional differences (cream cheese, shredded cheese and the normal slices), so I guess I'm kind of glad to have had the experience. We took dinner back to the Holiday Inn Express (none of us were actually staying there, which is amusing, but we were meeting people) and ate, then tried out Tobago (REALLY liked it!) before calling it a night.
This morning I packed. I now have two big checked bags and two carry-ons and a slight sense of guilt about Too Much Consumption, but I'll get over the latter. After breakfast I checked out (paid for the phone calls, ouch), headed to the fair and did exactly one thing: got a three-hour game demo, this one of Shipyard (loved the mechanics, again not fond of the bits: you'd think with so many games going bit-heavy they'd think a bit more about that during the design) before it was time to take my leave and head to the train.
Leaving Interlaken in the dark of the morning, I had one train change in Mulheim, and then on to Essen. Due to the construction at the station I kind of got turned around exiting, and ended up walking out the wrong door, so unfortunately I had to drag my stuff around to the hotel, but these things happen. After getting up to the room and settling in, I began the Quest For Cash.
The Spieltage, you see, is mostly cash-only. So if you want to get the newest games you've got to have the euros. I had come into Italy with a decent amount of cash, with the intention of spending a little and taking some out of the ATM as I went, but (something I haven't really covered during these reports yet) my card wasn't working as an ATM card. In Italy, I tried several machines, then called the bank (I have an international collect number, but apparently I don't stay in hotels where people understand WTF a "collect" or "reverse charges" call is, nor do they understand "operator", so I ended up just paying for the calls myself) but they said they never saw ATM access on their end. I also had Swiss Francs but figured I'd get more: same story in Switzewrland. The card worked as a credit card, though and the Swiss were more than willing to take my money that way, so it wasn't really an issue there. So we get to Essen and I'm low on Euros but still unable to use the ATM. There's a Western Union across the street from my hotel though, so I figure I'll use the Visa part of it to get my cash. I go in, no dice. Back to the room, back on the phone. This agent does some magic and thinks she's figured it out. Back to the Western Union, no dice. Back in the hotel, on the phone the next agent decides that the only way it'll work is to raise my daily limits, so I will have to wait until CA opens at 7:00am. Blah.
Well, I did have some cash left so I figured I'd hit the fair. Four quick U-Bahn stops later I was in boardgaming heaven at the Messe!! First cruise around the halls, I picked up a couple of games with my remaining cash that were absolute #1 on my priority list. At this point I was now committed: a few euros were all that was left so I needed the bank to come through. As you know, I do like games. This particular game.... not so much. I also cruised by the Rio Grande booth and the BGG booth to say hello to people and to get my bearings on things, as well as to share my cash pain with some fellow American travelers.
Taking my haul back to the hotel, I called the bank again and we got the limit adjusted (well, she said it already WAS adjusted so I don't know why she said we needed to have me call back), and back at WU I tried it again, and magically, I GOT MONEY! The lady behind the counter was happy for me. :)
So, back to the fair and time to buy more games. This I did, with abandon! I also hung out with the BGG crew a bit and arranged to catch up with them for dinner. Then I headed back to my hotel to drop off the afternoon's haul and to get the final insult: an email waiting for me from the bank saying that they'd placed a hold on my card due to a suspicious transaction: THE CASH I'D BEEN ARGUING TO GET ALL WEEK. O.M.F.G. As soon as I get back to the US where it's a free call, I'm SO calling to complain. They never did seem to manage to figure out why the card never worked as an ATM card either, so we'll be discussing that as well.
Anyway, the place they said for dinner was not where they said it was, but fortunately I ran into the gang and we ended up at a decent Italian Tapas place (yeah, Italian food and Tapas in Germany.... don't hurt yourself trying to figure that out) where I had a really good pasta-with-turkey dish. By that time it was late and bed was calling, so I hopped the U-Bahn home.
Friday morning... my first full day at the fair! I'm not even going to try and remember where I went at what times or where I bought what. There's so much to see and do and so many little things that happen along the way that it's a blur in some ways: I talked to people and wandered the halls a lot, went back to the hotel room with games at lunch and relaxed a bit, then finished out the day. The highlights included demos of Power Grid Factory Manager, some abstract called Avalam that I just kind of got roped into (wasn't bad), Fzzzt!, and at the end of the day El Paso. Oh, I managed to get the Ghost Stories: White Moon expansion with all of the goodies too, win!
Friday night a giant group was planning on dinner and games at the Hotel Arosa but after 30 minutes of no service we bailed for a steakhouse that they knew. When that turned out to not have the room, they decided on a Chinese place across the street, but two of the others and I had had enough chaos so we went to the pizza place we were supposed to have gone the night before and had a FANTASTIC dinner full of fun conversation and good pizza. A great way to end the day, but again too late to really game.
Saturday, the mechanics were much like Friday: get up, have breakfast, mush into the hall with the crowd, try to get demos, succeed sometimes, fail sometimes. Walk the hall, buy stuff, take games home at lunch.... okay, well then things got different. I had been buying... well... a lot. More than I have in years past. Perhaps more than I should have. But the relief of having cash and the fact that I had to skip last year made me kind of stupid. So at lunch on Saturday I went over to the Galleria Kaufhof and bought a large football duffel bag. Yes, I had come with one suitcase packed inside another. I still needed the bag. Really.
After lunch back to the show for more wandering, demos, a few small purchases (card games are tiny, as are game bits, right?), and so on. Demos over the course of the day were Endeavor (really liked) and Last Train to Wensleydale (loved the mechanics, didn't care for the components: the counters need to be stacked and were too light and small, and the train track pieces were larger than some of the spaces on the board: sloppy IMO).
I also over the course of the day learned about another game group in Southern California that I didn't know about, but many of them were at Essen and I liked hanging out with them so I'm definitely going to try and make it up to one of their meetings!
Dinner this time was another crew, which was neat. We went to Subway because we were planning on gaming. Yes, Subway. Now, I prefer to try local places as much as possible when I travel, but I was with the group so I did this: it's the first time I've ever been to an American chain outside of America... it was kind of surreal. The menu was mixed-language and there were regional differences (cream cheese, shredded cheese and the normal slices), so I guess I'm kind of glad to have had the experience. We took dinner back to the Holiday Inn Express (none of us were actually staying there, which is amusing, but we were meeting people) and ate, then tried out Tobago (REALLY liked it!) before calling it a night.
This morning I packed. I now have two big checked bags and two carry-ons and a slight sense of guilt about Too Much Consumption, but I'll get over the latter. After breakfast I checked out (paid for the phone calls, ouch), headed to the fair and did exactly one thing: got a three-hour game demo, this one of Shipyard (loved the mechanics, again not fond of the bits: you'd think with so many games going bit-heavy they'd think a bit more about that during the design) before it was time to take my leave and head to the train.