Chris dove in right away to talk to the manufacturers and collectors:

As you see, they are very intent on their discussions.

I thought the garden was lovely.

But..I forgot to mention. The airport had lost my bag.

I’d been wearing grubby tourist clothes this whole trip, but i had kept in reserve a nice dress shirt and skirt to wear for the Kassel pre-show dinner. I remembered it being formal.

But my bag was lost. The aiport was supposed to deliver it, but it didn’t come.

I remained in my grubbies, trying to carry it off with some level of suavity.

But here is the dining room:

I tried not to think about how I was wearing a black t-shirt and jeans.

There seemed to be a lot of suits and ties in the house:

But before I could worry too much about it, Norbert the German hippie arrived:

You can’t see it, but he has Birkenstocks on. He is an excellent model ship maker, and a truly wonderful man. He speaks fluent English and uses the term “hella” liberally.

But of course, the ship collectors were all very polite and did not make me feel out of place. They had lots of things to say about ships and models.

My bag arrived at last, right before desert. In addition to my pretty outfit, it also had some treasured ship models for the show. So, we had a great time at dinner and all agreed to get up early and see the show.