I promised a friend a story about my one and only trip to Germany, to attend the world's largest computer trade show, CeBIT. At its height it attracted over 700,000 attendees to 5 million square feet of exhibit space. I hate crowds.
My trip to Germany came at the end of a European field tour I did for Novell, back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the Internet. Our European field marketing manager had been giving me shit for months about running programs in a territory I'd never been to and after a while I agreed to go with him into the field.
Things started off well enough. The English were polite, the French were comprehensive and by the end of the week I had learned a lot. The best part was that I had arranged to spend the weekend with family in France and the field guy left me with instructions to meet Monday in Hannover. I was a little nervous about traveling to Germany alone but he was reassuring "don't worry, almost everyone there speaks English."
Riiight.
Sunday afternoon I flew from Paris to Hannover and landed in the most foreign country I had ever seen. Clean to the point of being sterile. A low cacophony of a sound I couldn't decipher. Words on signs that were 50 characters long and conveyed nothing.
The room began to spin until I heard a translated airport announcement and realized that the meaningful signs like "Baggage" and "Taxi" had also been translated. I made my way to the taxi stand. My destination was printed out and I showed it to the driver. The driver didn't speak to me but seemed to know where to go. As we drove, the sun began to set and I realized how hungry I was. But there was nothing to be done about that because I was not going to a hotel. I was going to someone's house. A stranger's house.
This is what everyone does, or at least did back in 1997. CeBIT may be the world's largest computer fair but it is not the world's largest hotel city and if you don't book your hotel room a year in advance you have to stay with one of the countless families who open their doors to CeBIT attendees every year.
The taxi driver turned in to the largest apartment complex I have ever seen. Dozens of giant, gray concrete buildings sprouted from the ground as far as my eye could see - which now that it was getting dark was not that far. The driver navigated a maze of buildings, finally stopping at one. He looked at my paper and looked at the building. He handed back the paper and said "here." He motioned for me to get out and pointed to a nearby building. I pointed too "there?" "Ja. You go here."
Very reluctantly I left the taxi. I watched him drive away feeling like a little kid. I walked to the door of a nearby building and pushed the intercom. A voice spoke "something completely unintelligible."
"Hi, I'm Karen, I'm from Novell." in my friendliest voice. "Something unintelligible" again. I said "I'm sorry, I don't understand. I'm here to stay with you…?" The buzzer let me into the building and I took the elevator up to the designated floor. A guy opens the door wearing pajamas and a robe. He doesn't let me in. I have mixed feelings about this. He tries to explain to me in German that I'm not actually staying there. There has been a change of plan and now someone else is staying here. I'm to stay with completely unintelligible German name who is "close" to here. He motions his fingers to show that I can walk there. He points in the direction I am supposed to go. Of course to my eyes, he is pointing to the apartment across the hall. But he doesn't mean this, he means this direction outside. Incredulous, I don't move. He ducks inside and I hear him on the phone. I stay put in the hall. When he comes back we go downstairs so he can point me in the right direction outside.
Now it is very dark. The buildings are cold and shadowy and seemed abandoned. The sidewalks are barren and there are too many of them, all leading in different directions. The tall trees added an extra sense of danger and I started to feel like Little Red Riding Hood who gets murdered by the unfriendly Germans who have left her alone in the middle of nowhere. Pajama Guy points to a group of buildings in the distance. I'm supposed to go that way. He gives me a piece of paper with the address. Four hundred characters of gibberish and some numbers that may or may not be 7s and 9s. Against my will, tears start to well up in my eyes. I really don't want to walk around this place alone.
Pajama Guy sees that things are about to turn emotional. With resignation and not a little bit of head shaking he takes my rolling suitcase and leads me through the paths to a far away apartment building. Straight until right. Straight again until the fork, then left and straight some more. If he hadn't come with me I would probably still be there today. I would go down in local history as the Tearful American Who Wanders Aimlessly Around Das Labyrinth.
He rang the apartment buzzer, announced me to my hostess and left me at the door with a nod and a shake of the hand. I was so grateful for the escort that I wanted to hug him. I didn't, but I held his hand for a long time. "Thank you. Thank you so very much (for not abandoning me)." Embarrassed he quickly left.
Inside the tiny apartment, my German hostess also did not speak English. She pointed to a room that had a queen-size mattress on the floor. It was made up for sleeping. There was another person's clothes on the bed and as I looked around, I saw a suitcase. I asked my hostess about the other person and she smiled and motioned to another part of the apartment. I have a roommate. No, I have a bedmate.
To my intense relief, my bedmate turns out to be my female friend and colleague, Janine, who speaks a little German. She tells me there is another guy staying in another room. We are all sharing the world's tiniest bathroom and the largest brassieres I have ever seen. Yes, our hostess is drying her super-sized undergarments in the bathroom. Pray they are gone by morning.
The next day we are greeted with breakfast. A mountain of sliced meats, hard bread and cheese. At least 10 different kinds of each and all decorated with American flag toothpicks. Ravenous I eat. The hostess is beaming.
The underwear is still in the bathroom but we shower nonetheless. A shuttle bus takes us to CeBIT where I meet up with our field manager. We go to the Novell booth to meet with our German counterparts. It is 10am and they are drinking. Novell is a very Mormon company. There is no drinking, no smoking and no cussing. I am not Mormon but even I was horrified by alcohol in the booth - for breakfast. Field guy shrugs it off and says "that's how it is out here." And he's right, almost every booth at CeBIT features alcohol of some kind and by 3pm everyone is so sloshing drunk that the product demos become meaningless.
We meet up with our Novell colleagues for a marvelous dinner in town. For a few hours I stop counting the minutes until I can go to the airport.
Another night with Janine, another morning full of salami, another day full of drunken demos and I am free.
Security at the Hannover airport was intense, or at least I thought so until I changed planes in Munich. Unsmiling men with machine guns oversee a very comprehensive search by German security.
I barely make my plane, and my escape.
