An early start to get through Lovere before rush hour. The trip around the lake is very scenic, and the loop road takes us level with the Gardone Valley. Unfortunately we have no time to visit any of the famous gunmakers, and they are most likely travelling north to attend IWA. So we swing to the south west to head back to Milan to find a motel for the night. Tomorrow's flight leaves early.
Motel Miami is only a few kilometres from Linate Airport. As we book in and take our bags to our rooms we are surprised to see they are underground. It also becomes apparent that it's popular with workers in an older profession. The young lady we pass in the hallway displays her assets very effectively to the annoyance of the man trying to get her through the door to his room. Our very own episode of Miami Vice!
To everybody's amazement I manage to circle the centre of Milan to find the factory once again where I pick up our spare parts order. We try the local speciality at an upmarket restaurant; what appears to be a pork casserole on yellow rice. We spend some time shopping in a suburban mall before heading back to the dark hallways of Miami. My highlight of the day is the evening meal. We walk to a pizzaria where a televised soccer match takes priority over trivial things like serving customers. While the waiter is quite civil, the mama seems to take a dislike to foreigners who dare to interrupt her football. I hand over a 50,000 lira note (about $50), which she snatches out of my hands, tries to tear and holds up to the light suspiciously. Damn! It's not a fake. I wonder what sort of scene would have erupted if she hadn't liked what she saw. As it is we trudge dispirited back to the motel quite looking forward to leaving such wonderful hospitality.
True to form our plane is late. We leave Milan in the grey dawn to arrive in Frankfurt an hour later in a similar grey mirk. We walk the short distance within the airport to the train station where we buy tickets for Nuremberg. With punctuality we later grow to expect we board the train - right on time. We spend two hours scanning the countryside from our train compartment looking for cows. Our Italian friend has told us about the Great German Bovine Mystery - how despite the fact that dairy products are popular here you never actually see any cattle in the fields. Our discussion on battery cows versus free range last until we reach Nurnberg.
We have been booked into a hotel in the old part of the city centre so take a taxi from the railway station. Hotel Durer is quite elegant but has nothing abnormal in its facilities. The DM210 (A$180) single room tariff seems to reflect the hotel's willingness to cash in on trade fair accommodation, so we resolve to find something a little more reasonable the next morning. After leaving our luggage at the hotel we find a restaurant (I have been itching to try "real" sauerkraut) and walk through the town. As dusk approaches (or I should say as it starts to get even gloomier) a light snow falls, dissolving as it hits the ground. I might mention it's quite cool outside, especially for Aussies who have just come from late summer. The fashion seems to be black mini skirts this year. The majority of girls walking the street must be freezing their little backsides off. Quite remarkable that they wear a waist-length jacket, short mini and high platform shoes over cobblestones while it's snowing!
In anticipation of a large hotel bill we visit the McDonalds establishment for dinner. The young Turk behind the counter, who is quite obviously proud of his English skills and the ability to say "yes" to everything I say, after ten minutes succeeds in delivering us nothing like what we order. What the heck, at least he's cheerful.
The first day of IWA 98. We walk through town to a car rental in the hope of finding means of getting a more reasonable place to stay. The only car available is a baby Renault which will be ready for pickup at 5pm. So we walk back to see if the hotel will look after our luggage for the day, which they grudgingly agree to, then take the underground to the Messe for a late start to the Fair.
An extremely helpful young frauline at the information kiosk finds us a pension in Allesberg, just a few kilometres south of Nurnberg. Rates are a quarter of the inflated hotels in town, plus they include breakfast! We make a preliminary tour of about half of the pavilions before it is time to go and collect our car.
Armed with a street map and vague directions we hit the road, pick up our luggage and head south. Luckily the Renault has a sun roof. Without this I would not see traffic lights change. Unlike Australia, where they position traffic lights in front of the traffic, the Germans have decided to make it impossible to creep forward of the line by placing them on the side of the intersection. To actually see them through the windshield you'd have to pull up ten to fifteen feet short of the line. Or wait until the car behind you beeps.
A quick tour of Allesberg reveals it's not a large town. We quickly find our home for the next few days and settle in. Pensions are like large bed & breakfast places, mostly run by a family. Pension Schneider has three floors and provides excellent evening meals. As it's still rather cool outside we opt to stay in for the evening.
Not much excitement over these days for the reader, so we will breeze over the business element of the trip. Saturday night features a buffet dinner under a large tarpaulin followed by a performance by one of Europe's top circuses to celebrate 25 years of IWA trade shows. The entire audience is herded in through a small entry, have their nose painted red, showered in confetti and swept clean by some clown with a broom. If it has some significance it is lost on us, but it does add to the atmosphere. It takes fully half an hour to fill the seats through this bottleneck, but the wait is worth it as we are entertained by a mixture of tightrope walkers, rope climbers, acrobats, a crossbow trickshooter and several clown routines that "involve" victims from the audience.
Many of the larger firms at the show have cafe-style layouts for their sales staff to discuss business with clients while supplying refreshments. We boldly bowl into one of these, sit down and ask the waitress for a drink. With no intention of buying anything I might add. She sees Les's Qantas tag on his bag and immediately adopts us as she has recently been to Australia on holiday. Two beers duly arrive, and we could easily have stayed and got tanked up if there wasn't so much to see and do elsewhere.
If IWA is only a fraction of the size of the Shot Show I doubt I'll be bothering to go to the American version. I'm exhausted from walking with an ever-increasingly heavy bag throughout the day, and after the fourth day my mnd is abuzz with trying to sort the masses of information fed into it in such a short time.
One memorable moment presents itself as we are asking Mr Nils about the grips he makes for different brands of Free Pistols. He is happy to make them for most brands except Toz 35s, which vary too much in the inletting and screw hole position to make a factory aftermarket grip viable. We notice a brand on his list we have never seen before - a Pfuff. So we ask Mr Nils, through the young lady he has translating, where they are made. Bamberg, he says. Due to the particular pronunciation of this town in German it sounds for all the world like a fart from Bumberg. We make our escape, holding back helpless laughter. Unfortunately we later discover the gentleman who makes Pfuffs has passed away, so the obligatory visit to Baumberg is averted.