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.