Spielwarenmesse in the snow

We’ve completed another whirlwind week in Nuremberg. It’s hard to believe this is the ninth time we’ve attended the Spielwarenmesse tradeshow. The highlight of this year’s event was the weather. The city experienced a near-record snowfall last Sunday, just two days before the show opened. It's hard to believe that two days earlier we'd been snorkelling in the Caribbean Sea.

Depending on who you asked, it was either the heaviest fall in two decades or the heaviest in three decades. Regardless, we arrived in Nuremberg to find almost 30 centimetres of snow on the ground. We’ve never enjoyed permanent snow cover in all the years we’ve been visiting Nuremberg.

This year, we flew Mitchell to Germany to join us for the first time.  It was an opportunity for him to explore the industry and meet our suppliers in person. We flew him into Nuremberg on Saturday afternoon so that he’d have at least two full days to acclimatise and recover from jet lag. He’s never seen snow before. As a result, he was delighted when it began falling on Sunday morning and didn't stop until the following morning. 

As happens every year, our suppliers wined and dined us again. Mitch got to experience the decadence of the Contiki Bar on Tuesday evening, followed by Cucina Italiana on Wednesday, and the infamous Pork Knuckle Dungeon on Thursday (Tucher Mautkeller Cellar is the official name). He was then invited to a European league football match on Friday night, another bucket list moment for him. I guess we’re now his favourite uncles for another month.

We’re currently waiting in the lounge at Frankfurt for our flight to London. We have more business meetings over the next week before we finally start heading home. It’s been a long time on the road, and another week of 10,000 daily steps and endless nights on the town has definitely taken its toll. I’ve got a nasty chest infection, and it looks like Garry has finally caught it as well. I got my flu and COVID shots before we left Sydney, so hopefully that’s helped with some of the Northern Hemisphere’s winter ailments.