Hong Kong John

N.B. / Interesting Tidbit: Hanover (English) is spelt “Hannover” in German, and I have deliberately made this substitution when using references in German, such as the Hannover 96 football team. The spellings throughout this article are deliberate.

I should explain that my first excursion comes after some interesting pre-planning. I arrived back in London without travel on the brain at all, in mid February. Rested and relatively more settled than I was at the beginning of the year, I decided to focus some of my efforts in exploring entrepreneurial activity. After taking some time setting up one particular venture from China (my written Chinese is approximately good enough that, to them, I was conversing in a rather perverted dialect of Klingon), I turned my attention to possibly doing something a bit more local.

One of the items in my posession that I was incredibly proud of at the time was my laptop cooler. I was quite convinced that it was simply the best design I had ever seen, and on several occasions it even caused me to wear a glove on my mouse-wielding right hand when it was turned on to avoid getting frostbite. I therefore contacted the company who makes them to ask how I could go about becoming a reseller should I wish to be one.

The response I got really wasn’t what I expected at all: “Come see us in person and take a look!” The venue? CeBIT – the world’s largest I.T. and technology fair. It also happened to be in Hanover. Three hours of deliberation later (helped by the knowledge that I had free tickets to the fair), I book a ticket on two week’s notice to go to Germany. And this is where my adventure begins.

Touching down in Hanover was a pain, because I decided to set a clever trend for things to come in my travels: I planned exactly nothing. Under normal circumstances, this would not inhibit too much aside from being generally clueless. However, I conveniently forgot to factor in that the world’s largest technology fair will be commencing in a few days. And Hanover is only home to half a million – so the population would likely close to double for the duration of the fair. Which will make finding affordable accommodation about as comfortable as gently sitting on top of the eyelashes of a hungry lioness.

Walking to the tourist information centre to get information on hotels was therefore the disaster that I clumsily didn’t anticipate. Almost everywhere was full, and the places that weren’t full were charging anything between 99 to 299 euros a night. After an hour and a half of fruitless knocking on doors of hotels in the centre of town, the penny (or Euro cent) finally dropped. I went back and asked for the local youth hostel.

I was pointed in some direction south of the city centre and took a tram. Getting off at the required stop, I then walk around what seemed to be a rather large building that looked like it was supported by two giant blue chopsticks. Welcome to the Hanover DJH Jugendherberge. The market for LSD in Germany was clearly alive and well. Who said bizarre architecture was out of fashion?

I found the hostel incredibly orderly, clean and tidy. I was later told this is rather common in Germany…obviously! There was even a bar at the back of the ground floor, and there was no shortage of tall, blonde, smartly dressed people in leather pants named Hans to drink copious amounts of beer with. Okay, so that was a lie. Except the last part.

After dumping my bags, I decided to wander out and explore the local area. I step out of the building and walk back in the general direction of town. Upon passing the large building I saw earlier, I noticed a rather large crowd walking towards me. I looked rather intimidated until I turned around and realised it was theAWD Arena – the local stadium housing the Hannover 96 football team. To add to the excitement, the one person I happened to stop to ask for directions normally goes to the games with a family member, but was alone today. As a result, he had a spare season ticket – which I promptly snapped up!

A good German football game, with a German sausage hot dog in one hand and a German beer in the other, was the perfect introduction to the country. It was the first time I had been to a football game, which went against my promise to my mate Dan to who I promised to lose my ‘football virginity’ at a Chelsea game. However, given the spontaneity and good fortune of the moment (as well as not being entirely sure if ‘losing my football virginity’ in England meant getting hit in the head by a drunken supporter of the opposition) I was sure I’d have his forgiveness.

Hannover 96 produced a happy (for us home supporters anyway) upset 1-0 victory over a much-stronger-on-paper Bayer Leverkusen. It was great that I was there, especially since they suffered a 4-0 drubbing when the two sides met again later in the Bundesliga season. Talk about holding a grudge. For dinner, I hopped on the tram to the centre of town in Kröpcke, and walked through the shops inside the Niki-de-Saint-Phalle Promenade.

The shops and the walk were surprisingly good. I was expecting more exclusive shopping streets are taken up by big or expensive brands. I actually found many affordable shops, a few cafés, and a restaurant or two. After buying some toiletries for my hostel stay and a souvenir or two, I nipped into the local McDonald’s because I couldn’t resist finding out what a rösti burger tasted like (pretty decent, actually…). I then went on to a bar where all the prices appeared to change every two minutes on a randomised electronic board – a very amusing idea, especially when everyone dashed to the bar as soon as the numbers turned green (signalling a ‘cheap’ period for a drink)! Unfortunately, I cannot remember the name of the place off the top of my head.

The next day was spent in Hamburg, which will be the subject of my next post. I still had one day left until the start of CeBIT, however. I spent that looking at some of Hanover’s local attractions. The first stop was the famous Herrenhäuser Gardens.

Unfortunately, the best season to see the gardens would have been in a few months time when the temperatures are warmer in Spring proper. As the last of winter breezed on, I was only treated to a taste of what was to come. The place was absolutely huge, and it was also subdivided into many smaller gardens along the fringes of the largest. There is even a grotto designed by the influential-to-Hanover Niki de Saint Phalle.

Tactically asking the garden staff to climb up their four-storey high mobile scaffolding (used to trim the tops of trees) was useful in getting a fantastic overview of the gardens. As well as potentially breaking your neck on something that’s swinging several feet to each side.

Moving on from the barren but still beautiful gardens, I take a trip back into the town centre to the quarter called Steintor. As the sun sets, this portion of the town is famous for its night life, abundance of pubs and bars, and the home of Hanover’s sex scene.

There are a few cafés tucked away here and there, but they largely give way to alcoholic (as well as slightly more adventurous) institutions as the night creeps in. Many of these places were shut during the day, although that did not cause me much bother as I didn’t feel I was the type to venture back in the evening. Instead, I contacted my friend Dirk (whose ticket I used to see Hannover 96 play football the day before) and borrowed his bike to tour around the city.

Doing your own tour of Hanover could not get much easier. The Red Thread is a line painted on the floor of many of the city’s streets. It starts at the tourist information centre near the train station and goes through much of the city, giving somebody a great walking tour – or in my case, an adventurous bike ride. On foot, it can typically take up to three hours if you take your time. It will also take you past some lovely sights on the river Leine.

The red line eventually leads into the Old Town, a section of the city marked by uneven cobblestones, beautiful street lanterns and an abundance of pubs and bars. The place absolutely oozes character and is also a fantastic place ot admire the local architecture.

If you can get there on a Saturday between 7am and 4pm, the Old Town Flea Market is the oldest flea market in Germany. Look for the stalls on the Hohen Ufer bank of the Leine.

When at the old town hall (the large, red building) near the end of your tour, see if you can spot the small gargoyle’s head on one side of the building warding off evil spirits. Clue: it’s just about visible in the photo below. Finally, you may be hungry or thirsty after your tour ends back near the train station. A bite to eat and beer or three to drink is perfect at the many stalls in the Hannover Markthalle which is located roughly south of the station. It may also enhance your cycling abilities. Or not, as the case may be.

After a thoroughly enjoyable meal and drink, I retired for the day – my last two days in Hanover would be for the CeBIT fair, which I needed to rest up for if the rumours about how big the place is were true. And sure enough, they were.

There is no real way to describe how big the CeBIT convention is by comparing it to a regular convention centre. In my opinion, it made most international airports look rather insignificant. There were no fewer than 24 halls on site, each comfortably larger than several football pitches. I was to find out that during the two days I was there browsing as much as I could for six to eight hours, I only managed to see about 15% of the fair. To put it simply, it eats other conventions for afternoon tea (and washes them down with beer, naturally).

This was the entrance to Hall 6. There were a lot of halls.

24 of them, in fact. With another ten or so slightly smaller buildings in which meetings and conventions were held. One particular hall was entirely dedicated to resellers – imaginatively titled Planet Reseller. This amused me somewhat as many of the consumer products in the electronics halls (yellow on the map) did nothing but exclusively show off things that one would have to resell. As a result, the absolutely massive Planet Reseller (orange) wasn’t of particular interest to me but impressive it was still.

Other things of note at CeBIT ’09 included a drop-in by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Angela Merkel to chat about how California is CeBIT’s “partner state” for 2009 at the opening ceremony. I’m confused as to what this meant other than the presence of some American companies in the middle of what could otherwise be known as China – nevertheless, it was fun to sneak in. The security was ridiculous, and Arnie was already in an armoured (no joke) motorcade about 25 seconds after he finished his speech, utilising some sort of back route out of the building. Being Germany, however, the vast crowd of screaming fans were both disperse, silent, and somewhat disinterested thanks to the hasty departure. Hasta la vista…

“Wait, WHO’s in the audience!?”

The products on display at CeBIT ranged from the awesome and new to the weird and wacky. Without further ado, a selection for viewing pleasure:

Asus were busy showing off their recently unveiled eee Keyboard PC at CeBIT, which was incredibly interesting to me for one particular reason. Imagine a home where you had no computers, but only massive flatscreen televisions in each room. You would then be able to walk around with this keyboard (also the computer, don’t forget) and simply work on whichever screen suited you the best. Provided you could afford to live in a house where there are sufficiently many rooms that far apart, AWESOME.

And if you’ve spent your whole professional career wondering where you could get an inflatable laptop bag for your netbook, they now come in a lovely range of colours! Unfortunately, while they do protect very well, it would somewhat defeat the idea of tucking your small netbook away in the first place and showing it off in something translucent and pierce-able.

On the surface this photo doesn’t look that exciting. However, it’s a smart car towing a tractor. The line between them is actually a line on the road in the distance – there’s no physical attachment. Using only magnets and a computer, they dragged this around for a while to the amazement of everyone who stood around and braved the wind. Cherry on the top would be that there’s no driver to steer the tractor!

I also stopped counting the number of times I saw various pieces of electronic equipment in dangerous proximity to lots of water. Naturally, just for fun. Although when I offered to try putting water perilously close to many of the other products on show, they didn’t think this was a good idea.

CeBIT isn’t just about the world’s computing fraternity gathering in one place, though. The event is equally famous for companies hosting their after-event parties, and the great thing about them is that they don’t wait until the last evening – there are things going on EVERY NIGHT. I leave Hanover with my happy memories of unlimited (oh God, were they unlimited) supplies of free beer and parties where even hard nosed company officials let loose and have a bit of fun.

Behold, the unlimited line of free beer. It just kept on coming – I was convinced there were magical elves back there.

This was one of the many, many parties after the exhibition’s end of the day that saw CeBIT transformed into a collection of stages and alcohol serving establishments.

Hanover was a difficult place to judge at a single time of year alone. Obviously, going when CeBIT is on will always centre your experience on the exhibition itself which is sufficiently large that few other things would amaze you as much. However, it will be great to go back to the Herrenhäuser gardens in late spring, for example – and to spend a little more time there properly experiencing the street life of what looks like a city in some ways but a small town in others. In the words of the Governator at the 2009 CeBIT opening speech…I’ll be back (groan)!