Chris was possibly even worse the next morning.

Bloodshot, drenched in sweat. Sick.

Naturally, he did not want breakfast.

I went down to the breakfast buffet at 7:30 to find Car Deal guy. He was not there yet, but I saw Shipcollector. Shipcollector was going to head off in another direction by train, so the fellowship of the car rental was breaking up.

He and I shared breakfast, and chatted over coffee. He is a very charming man, and I always enjoy talking with him.

But we were finished eating, and still no Car Deal guy. Shipcollector went off to check out, and get ready to meet his train.

I was trying to decide whether to call in to Car Deal guy’s room.

More ship people came by, though. There was greetings, a little more coffee drinking.

I asked people if they had seen Car Deal guy. No one had, and I just couldn’t tell if it would be appropriate to call his room.

Finally, at 10:00, I called.

He was asleep! but he thanked me for waking him before they cleared away breakfast, and rushed down to get some food.

I had a few more bites, and more coffee. We discussed ship things, and I told him Chris was still sick.

Here’s the thing. Our plane flew out at 8:30 PM that evening. Car Deal guy flew out the next morning, so he had a hotel room near the airport.

We had a day to kill. BEFORE the illness, the plan was to do a little sightseeing together. But now, that seemed out of the question. Car Deal guy was very sympathetic, and even offered to let Chris sleep in his hotel room until we had to leave for the airport. What a guy!

In the end, we asked the hotel there in Kassel if we could check out late, and Chris was able to sleep a couple more hours. He was much recovered, and we took off at 1.

It’s sort of amazing to me. Chris and I are special to each other. I suppose it’s the same with many husbands and wives (which we are preparing to be). Spouses can be less guarded with each other.

So, while Chris was limp and tired and pathetic while lying in bed in our hotel room, somehow he got some starch in him for the trip to Frankfurt. They way he’d been, i thought he might just prop himself against the side and semi-snooze.

But he sat up, consulted the map and discussed ships and directions the whole way. Miraculous. By the time we got to Car Deal guy’s hotel (one that Chris and I had stayed in when we were there last), he didn’t need to lay down.

What he DID need was food. No breakfast and no dinner the night before meant he needed some fuel. So we sat in the hotel lobby cafe and talked. We didn’t leave for the airport until 6:30.

Our flight was to Copenhagen. We were going to stay the night at the hilton hotel there, and then take off in the morning. Tomorrow’s flight would be back to Helsinki, then on to New York, and finally to Los Angeles.

But today, we merely needed to check in, get on the flight, and walk to our hotel.

Unfortunately, Chris deflated somewhat when we were alone again. I propped him up in a cushy chair with a ginger ale and went off to find some internet. It was the journey back, and that is when the pull of all the home things starts. What’s in my email now?

We made the flight no problem, quick trip to Copenhagen. It was about 10 when we got to Copenhagen. We only needed to find the hotel and crawl into bed.

But Chris was hungry. We passed all the usual airport food on on the way to the hotel. Chris thought we could do better. “Airport food is too expensive.We might as well get room service”

The hotel was beautiful. We settled put all our bags down and consulted room service. Room Service hours ended at 10:30.

NOW Chris was starving. We walked back to the airport, remembering a Burger King there.

Burger King was closed.

Everything was closed.

This is a reason to always always always pack a big supply of cliff bars for any journey.

I had eaten on the plane, and was not so hungry. But Chris’s brain was short-circuited.

I tried to come up with alternatives:
“Baby, we can just order the room service. It’s not THAT expensive.”

“They close at 10:30. It’s too late.”

“I bet they will have something.”

He couldn’t believe that nothing in the airport was open, and that there was nothing nearby. It was as if he knew it was true while at the same time thinking it COULDN”T be true.

I made him go back to the hotel room.

“You rest here. I’m done with you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You just stay here. I’ll handle it.”

I went down to the bar in the lobby, hoping I could talk them into giving us some room service. In the end, they gave me a hamburger with all the sides (a meal in itself!) to take up to the room.

I came back with a big plate of burger. Chris ate at last.

“You came back so fast, I thought you were going to say you couldnt’ get anything.”

“No, I’m taking care of you. You needed food.”

So we split the plate and then watched some TV to unwind after our day.

“Too bad we can’t enjoy this room very much. It’s really nice.”

“I know!”

“Good night, baby. Get good sleeps.”

“Good night….You got the wake-up call?”

“Yes, don’t worry.”

“thank you. Good night.”

“Good night.”

We drove into town to attend the big deal once-every-two-years 1250 Ship model show in KASSEL.

Everyone was excited. They were stacking up outside the door.

People were not let in before the appointed time. Only the ones selling things were inside. There were a lot of people selling things. Car Deal guy and Shipcollector were peering into the room excitedly, but Chris was motioned in by Norbert the German hippie. He would help Norbert sell, so he got a pass.

Usually, Chris would like to have a big selection of ship models to sell. But this year, he had some bad luck with the production of the models and didn’t really have enough to make reserving a sale table worthwhile. Norbert had kindly offered him space on the tables he’d reserved

I stood out with the rest of the collectors and watched in amazement as the hall filled up. Lots of people had gotten there early.

Then, the ticket sellers let us through. The collectors swooped in and began to buy ships.

It’s difficult to convey the atmostphere at this show. It was a lot of quiet concentrated peering:

many people peering:

It seemed to be bigger than the other time I’d been. In addition to the first big room, four other rooms were filled with model ships and model paraphenalia.

Sellers had devised many different methods of displaying these tiny delicate models:

This is a recreation of a harbor, one that loaded containers (best known as those trailers that semi trucks drag behind them) onto container ships:

As you can see, the typical ship collector is
1. Male
2. over a certain age

This homogeneity was broken up when I saw these two:

Twins, I think.

they were very cute.

I was sitting at the table with Chris, prepared to sell some of the ships he had brought. I felt pretty ignorant though. I could take money and give change, but as for answering questions about the merchandise, I had to defer to Chris

He was pretty busy answering questions.

Of course, he did have to slip away and try to talk with manufacturers and other people who could be useful to our business.

Those dicussions looked like this:

It was all about the models, friends.

Someone tried to take a survey of the attendees:

it was somewhat incomplete. But it was an idea of how far different folks had travelled to get there.

I got to meet some of the people behind the manufacturing lines I had gotten to know. That was pretty exciting.

There was a little snack bar where we got some food to get us through, but at the end of the day we were wiped slick.

We packed up and got ready to go. It was kind of hard to stop talking and saying goodbye to all these people. Everyone had stories or ship facts to share.

But we made it back to the hotel.

Chris had turned into a deflated balloon. His eyes were bloodshot and he had no energy. My man was sick.

“I used up all my energy reserves today,” he said. “I need to lay down.”

He crawled into bed and slept.

I went off to explore the hotel’s sauna.

They had the hottest sauna I had ever been in. There was a sort of cartoon on teh wall explaining how it worked. You were supposed to hose off, get into the sauna, then get into the freezing cold “hot tub”(was it supposed to be freezing?), hose off again, rinse and repeat.

it looked complicated, so I just went into the sauna. wow, it was hot.

There were two. One normal, and one that said it was at 90 degrees celsius. That’s 194 degrees! it was so hot, I almost felt like I should have a lifegaurd there to drag me out if I fainted.

But it felt good.

I went back upstairs to check on Chris. He looked worse.

So I showered, and read and hung around until dinner.

He was worse.

So I went to dinner alone and had a time with a bunch of ship people. Car Deal guy was there, and some new people I hadn’t met. It was a good time, but I was worried about Chris.

Car Deal guy and I talked it over. We realized we didn’t have much planned for the next day but to make it back to Frankfurt in the evening to meet our flight. I recommended we take it easy, and he could mosey into breakfast whenever and we’d find each other there.

I went back to the room. Poor Chris.

“Hey baby,” he said weakly.

“Poor thing.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t go to dinner with you.”

“It’s okay baby, you are sick. You can’t help it.”

“I’m sick”

“I know. Get some sleep. We dont’ have to get up in the morning anytime. You can just rest.”

“You’re nice.”

“Good night.

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.

So, this was the day we go to Germany. This very night is the night of the ship collectors’ dinner-before-the-show. We must be there to converse and create good feelings and maybe even new alliances.

we CANNOT miss the flight. Or the train to the airport. Or the wake up call.

These were the things Chris was concerned with the night before.

We did not miss the flight, or all it’s predecessors. We arrived in Frankfurt on time.

NOW, the plan was to meet a fellow American ship collector. He got a great deal on a rental car (because of his employer) and invited us to save even more money by sharing the bill and riding together. At the end, there was car-deal guy, another ship-collector friend, and Chris and I.

All in Frankfurt airport, to meet on the same day.

Car deal guy was going to arrive the earliest, so he was waiting around (according to the plan) before we got there. Shipcollector was arriving at about the same time as we were, but from America and therefore required to go through customs. We were all supposed to meet at the car rental counter and sally forth.

But Frankfurt is a big airport. We found a map, went off to the rental counter. No Car Deal guy.

Maybe he is coming.

But were is Shipcollector?

Are we in the right place?

Being the Murphy that I am, I asked the question. Rental counter said Car Deal guy had left a message that he was at a different rental counter.

OH!

So we ran off to find the OTHER rental counter. We saw Shipcollector from far away, and Car Deal guy was right there too. Oh good.

…should I be frustrated at the lack of question-asking gumption of those around me? Should I just feel superior and enlightened? It is unlikely that anything I do will cause a change in the behaviour of others…so maybe I should just feel smugly superior, since that is a slightly happier feeling than frustration…

Although, to be honest, it was my asking for directions that led us to that (wrong) rental counter in the first place…

Okay, so we are settled in a nice rental…Ford…? Tooling along the autobahn in a ford station wagon, everyone had print outs of the directions, but Chris actually got us there.

It was a pleasant ride. I do enjoy the conversation with the ship collectors. They are smart people, and almost uniformly polite and gentlemanly. There is an on-going discourse about “the Wives” feelings concerning the hobby of ship-collecting. Many wives feel a bit of resentment towards it.

I feel a bit of resentment at the phrase “the wives” (what a horrible stereotype of a phrase!)

But then again, as the wife-to-be of Chris, I see the ships as an inflow of capital. The other “wives” see it truly as a drain on the family budget.

So, I am free to enjoy the company and conversation of these nice men without resenting their peer pressure to spend wads of dough. It is a little odd, though, when at ship event I am shoved towards “the wives” as if our shared gender will mean LOTS of THINGS to DISCUSS. These ladies are all very nice, but I seldom find much to really talk about.

I’d rather go hang out with the men. I guess this is what comes of being the youngest with three brothers..”Whatcha doing? Can I see? What’s that? What are you talking about? …cool…”

This will be Chris’s 3rd Kassel meeting. Shipcollector had been once before, and Car Deal guy had never been. I’d been once before (and met Shipcollector for the first time then). After our traipsing through Scandinavia, Germany felt like home.

The hotel was cozy, and they gave us free coffee in the lobby. We quickly packed our bags into the room (hey, we got a free upgrade! Look at this suite!) and came back down to begin early schmoozing. There was beer served in the patio and garden, and a generous show of empty glasses. The party was on!

I was pretty psyched to see the pantomime.

The curtain dropped:

The story unfolded.

Some French looking guy in a white clown suit (possibly the illegitimate son of the Pillsbury dough boy) was involved:

There was a halequin and a girl:

Of course, a magic sword appeared in short order:

But, in an unexpected twist, a dancing bear arrived:

In the end, even though I was rooting for the bear, the harlequin got the girl AND…

…the blessing of the Greek pantheon.

Chris commented “Maybe it made more sense in Danish.”

We were STARVING at that point. It was tough to decide on a place to eat.
There were a lot of places to eat. But they were
*expensive
*cold
*smokey

I was just about ready to cry with how tired and hungry I was.

This is where we ate.

It was really nice and yummy. And we were in the non-smoking section.

TIvoli was really beautiful at night:

Tired and beat, we made it back to the hotel.

Tomorrow, Kassel Germany. The real reason for our trip was to get to the ship show.

“We can’t be late. This is really important”

“Don’t worry baby. Good night.”