Go West 2017

Go West 2017, the travel trade show we attended, is a very well organized and effective travel trade show which takes place at another place of the Western U.S. each year. 15 states participate, about 500 suppliers and buyers, among them around 20 journalists from all over the world. Monday was "Education Day", with interesting lectures of all kinds and site inspection tours for tour ops and travel agents. Business appointments started on Tuesday and continued until Wednesday evening: pre-scheduled meetings of 12 minutes each. We, as media, are considered "buyers" and sat at our designated tables. The "suppliers" ran around and stopped by to introduce their destination/hotel/tour/museum/region and to get to know how they can be helpful. It's strenuous to talk to so many different people, but in the course of time - it's our 4th Go West Summit - it got really "concentrated" and just the people, which could be helpful and/or interesting to us are showing up.

Monday evening the official Opening Party took place at the Automobile Museum (which we already knew from our pre-fam trip), on Tuesday we were invited for a dinner of four to a fantastic restaurant by name "Bricks" and we not only enjoyed good food and wine, but also great conversation. Tuesday - surprise! - it was snowing all day and many highways, even interstates were shut down. It looked beautiful on Wednesday morning, like "winter wonderland", but wouldn't have wanted to drive over the mountains that day and was sweating quite a bit about road conditions on Friday.

Wednesday evening the closing event at the Reno National Bowling Stadium was a lot of fun. This is the only stadium of its kind in the entire world, with 78 state-of-the-art championship lanes, fully computerized and highly professional. The dinner buffet was delicious, too - I indulged in great burrata, olives and hummus, but there was also chicken in different preparations, great cold cuts and cheeses, sliders and roastbeef and ham and a lot more. Also, talking of meals, we have to admit that the lunches in the conference center (or, rather, in the Atlantis Hotel, were we stayed, and which is directly connected to the conference center) were great. We had basque beef stew, filled chicken breast and steak for lunch and a great hot breakfast on Wednesday, sponsored by the next host city, Salt Lake City. All was VERY good, especially, considering the amount of meals they had to prepare.

Well, back to bowling. First we both didn't want to bowl, Peter because of his back problems, me because I didn't want to make a fool of myself. So, we watched first and chatted and took pictures with our Japanese friend Hiro (pic). But then, rather randomly, we met members of our fam-tour-group - a Malaysian and two Chinese guys. Well, they convinced us to take part, and, to save the German reputation, I got me bowling shoes and - though I never had bowled before - did pretty well. Cleared all the pins four times and the Asian guys (and Peter and me) were pretty surprised. We had a couple of beers and though we were more gesticulating than talking, we had a lot of fun this evening. When I split my thumb nail horizonatally in half, I wasn't that good anymore ... but, perhaps the other boys were glad about it. Just being pretentious!