Convention started on Saturday and its start was (traditionally) sounded by organizer who blew a horn at 10:00. There was a long line on entrance before opening and there were lots of people inside from the beginning. Our layout sparked lots of interest from the visitors with small details, sound and smoke. Lots of the visitors (end exhibitors) were surprised how far we traveled to be there.
Four of us spent a day in between watching over layout, looking at vendors offering (and buying) and looking at the other layouts. There were several large retailers with their store offerings and lots of small (and big) second hand dealers. In total, there were 19 layouts, few dioramas and several workshops. Layouts were beautifully done, with lots of details in combination of scales and gauges. Most of them were designed for some kind of operation and they operated during convention. In one of the later post we’ll put some pictures of those layouts.
Convention has nice bar that’s been serving food (conveniently named :-)), drinks and deserts. For most of the day it was hard to find a free table with all visitors and exhibitors taking a break and socializing.
Saturday went on pretty fast and soon it was 18:00 and Convention closed for visitors. We had one hour to mingle around without visitors and check other layouts before “formal” diner.
Tables were put in smaller exhibition room (between layouts :-)) and we all took our places. One of the organizers (Markus Meier) gave a short speech (first in German and then in English). He specially mentioned us and layout from Italy as, sort of, curiosity.
Dinner was served at 19:00, and it was really good. Guys from CLMX layout (former City Limits Layout) provided American beer for all of us (besides the regular German served at Convention).
All the exhibitors were presented with sticker with convention logo to put on their layouts as a sign of participation and Dubravko went to pick ours.
We’ve been there until 22:00 and then get back to hotel with intention of having additional beer in hotel bar. It turned out that bar was full of exhibitors with same intention but we managed to find a table.
Very nice article and great video about our layout can be seen on Pennula web site.
Also, there are pictures on Convention site, in the gallery of 2015 Convention.