Suits, not nerds

Munich is famous for Oktoberfest. Cologne is famous for it's cathedral, Hamburg is famous for its harbor and Frankfurt is famous for its banks. What is Hannover famous for? It's trade show (not kidding).

Hannover proudly calls itself the Messe Stadt, which I would translate as Expo City, but the people in charge have translated as "city of international fairs". They go on throughout the year, but the king (or König) of these fairs is CeBIT. It is the world's largest and most international computer and technology expo.

For a week in March, Hannover is a hot spot. Restaurants are full, trains are packed, traffic is heavy and tourists abound. Hotel rooms go for four times their usual rates. I mentioned CeBIT once before in a post where I speculated about whether it would be worth renting out our apartment to expo-goers. So far, we haven't.

This year I decided that if CeBIT is what Hannover is famous for, then I should go. I wasn't interested in the IT factor so much as the nerd factor. I thought it could be a really good anthropological experience.

CeBIT stands for Centrum der Büroautomation und Informationstechnologie und Telekommunikation. That means Center for Office Automation and Information Technology and Communication.

You can't just go to CeBIT; you need a ticket. Buying one for 60 euros was not an option, so I worked my very few connections and got a free ticket through the international school. I headed to the expo center with the IT teacher and a class of five 11th graders (yes, there are sometimes classes of 5 at our school).

What did I find? First of all, CeBIT is huge. There are 5 million square feet of convention space. At its peak, 850,000 visitors swarmed in on Hannover, with its modest population of 500,000. These days only 300,000 people are coming to CeBIT, but the expo space is just as massive. There are shuttle buses running visitors between buildings because it takes so long to walk through the whole expo complex. The exhibits I saw ranged from scanners to crop sensors to smart homes and construction technology. I didn't understand much of it. And I only made it through 3 or 4 of the 20 expo buildings.

And, to my disappointment, I didn't find any robots and I didn't find many nerds. What I found were men in suits. Rather, men in a suit. The German businessman uniform goes like this: black suit, white shirt, narrow blue tie. Those who are real renegades might sport a dark gray suit and dark red tie. It was easy to spot the foreigners at CeBIT because they were not in uniform.

In uniform at the T Mobile exhibit

Definitely not a German

Of course, the men in suits could have been nerds in disguise. They could have been cleaned-up nerds or reformed nerds. Whoever they were, they belonged there and I did not. I don't know much at all about technology. I told the kids I wanted to find the Samsung exhibit and proudly show them my Samsung:

They thought that was pretty funny. Or at least they humored me.


So it turns out that Hannover is not famous for a nerd convention. It's famous for a massive international technology expo. This year they even had a live televised interview with Edward Snowden. I didn't see it. so I don't know what he was wearing. Hopefully he put on a black suit.