Austrian Ramblings: <strong>Essen 2006 - Day 3/20.10.06</strong>

At breakfast our games lists were updated, final purchases noted and last things to check out. We arrived at the halls at 10.15, Jo had stayed at the hotel to catch up on a bit of work, and we arranged to meet him later. The halls were definitely more crowded today, I would hate to be here tomorrow, I should think it will be packed. I wanted to have a look at Ave Caesar, the Pro Ludo reprint was selling for around 20/21 euros. I think that will fill the remaining space in my case nicely thank you so I purchased a copy. We met up with Jo and he wanted to check out the Japanese games on the Japon Brand stand, they had a small stand in hall 4, with very polite assistants bowing every time they give out a leaflet. I didn’t know too much about their games but Jo was ecstatic to find them selling Q-Jet 21XX, a space-themed version of Ave Caesar, and immediately bought 2 copies, one for himself and one for Richard. I purchased Phantom Rummy, a cross between Maj Jong and Rummy, mainly I admit for the artwork, which was really nice.
Fiske had a marvellous colour-coded checklist to work from and he diligently tracked down the best price for each game he wished to purchase, saving one or two euro’s on each one but wearing out a lot of shoe leather.
Time was getting on and we decided to go back to the centre of Essen for some coffee and a snack, so we bade our farewells to the Messe around 3.45. The hotel had let us leave our cases there so we went back to pick them up and fit the final games in. Our train was leaving at 5.36, and we arrived in plenty of time, we saw it on the display then it disappeared, after some enquiries we found out it had been cancelled. I thought the german railway system was perfect, ah well. Not to worry, we eventually arrived at the airport for our short flight to Gatwick. Our adventure to Essen was over, we all had a great time and came back with enough games to keep us playing for quite a while.