Germany: Erdinger, Hannover, Kassel (Mar/01)

    Erdinger Brewery

Once more, I went to Hannover for the Cebit trade show.

For my first impressions on Germany, look also at the page for my  first visit, in Mar/2000. I was a lot more excited about Germany and wrote more at that time.

Cebit is the larger trade show in the world. Period. There are almost 30 exhibition halls covering almost every aspect of computing.

Hannover in March is always cold, wet and cloudy. This time it was snowing. Different from past trips, I arrived to Germany right before and left right after the long trade show, so I did not have much time to explore. In the last day, I had some time to bike around Ismaning and Erdinger (in Bavaria) before catching the Lufthansa flight back home.

Besides Cebit, the highlights of the trip were staying in Kassel (a town 150km south of Hannover) and taking the ICE train (it travels at 230 km/h) everyday to the show.

Europe in Mar/01 is scared about the mad cow and foot-and-mouth diseases affecting the cattle stock. They are avoiding eating beef and smoked salmon seems to be the replacement of choice.

Jon Maddog Hall, one of the strange looking persons in the photo above, is one of the most recognizable Linux celebrities.