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• Banana-nutella crêpes rock, as does Mezzo Mix. Combine the two, and the overdose of sugary goodness will last me until next Spiel.
• The best shower in the world, thanks to the Atlantic Congress Hotel Essen – hot, fast, strong, and high enough that I didn't have to duck. It's always a struggle to get up after a late night in Essen, but this shower made doing so far easier.
• Good travel with my son. Traver is nearly four, and since he freaked out while boarding a plane sixteen months ago – so much so that he and my wife had to leave the plane – we were both delighted that he had a blast on the flight to and from Germany. He's still severely jetlagged and woke at 4 a.m. this morning, but is otherwise doing fine.
• Mailing services from a generous Spiel attendee, which allowed me to travel home lighter and better keep an eye on the aforementioned son. Since I had already punched, nested and boxed everything, he was able to ship the games out the Monday following the fair. Many thanks!
And on the downside:
• As normally happens at such events, I picked up a case of Spielgrippe at some point over the five days and am now achey and cotton-headed. Hope I didn't infect too many of you I met during the show!
• I failed to publish a number of designer diaries for Spiel 2012 releases as I simply ran out of time; the diaries will still appear on BGG News as they're informative and could be of interest to readers, but their timeliness has dropped a far amount.
• Along the same lines, I received games debuting at Spiel from a few publishers too late for me to put together preview videos or otherwise get information out in time. I'm thankful for the advance look at the games and still intend to preview them and update the BGG database with more detailed information, but again this is somewhat like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. I got out a few video previews well in advance of the convention (City of Horror, Suburbia, Seasons, Spooky Spells), and that was thanks to a combination of (a) receiving the game well in advance of Spiel and (b) being less info-crunched in August and early September. By the time September starts running out, I'm a harried mess with more info coming in than I can possibly handle in as much detail as I'd wish, which leads to...
• An incomplete Spiel 2012 Preview. My personal challenge each year is to make the Preview as complete as possible, but I always miss games and publishers due to me not knowing about them or me running out of time. I feel like I started earlier than ever in 2012, and publishers and designers were sending info earlier than ever, yet the clock still ran out. The number of games released each year continues to rise, so even with an early start, it's easy to get overwhelmed.
• My apologies to all those I missed seeing during Spiel 2012, especially those with whom I had actually made appointments. Time flies at the show, and it's tough to travel across all the halls in a few minutes. Thankfully I was able to do follow-up meetings with most of those I missed.
• A lack of real-time news from the show. Even with the BGG crew doing live game demos at its stand from Wednesday through Sunday, with a new game featured roughly every 10-15 minutes, we couldn't possibly cover all the games debuting at Spiel 2012. Thus, I recorded 40-50 game demoes at different locations throughout Spiel (with Scott, Jon or Beth serving as cameraperson), and we'll post those in the weeks to come. With me doing those, I didn't have much time to scope the grounds or try out many new games that debuted at the show.
• Not enough banana-nutella crêpes.
And how about you guys? What stood out for you, whether positive or negative? Feel free to discuss games, too, since I can't contribute too much in that regard...
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