Frankfurt Book Fair, Day 4: Autographs and cosplayers
Sunday, October 19th, 2008
One of the pleasures of attending trade fairs and conventions is meeting up with other members of the globally distributed Wikitravel tribe. On Thursday, User:Sapphire managed to drop in during a fortuitously timed stopover at Frankfurt Airport, and today, User:Mark did a five-hour-one-way odyssey from Lausanne just to attend the Fair. Pictures were taken, books signed, pictures taken, invaluable travel advice dispensed, obscure details of map generation with XSLT and typesetting with xelatex were discussed, and a few beers quaffed too.
This was also the first day of the Fair open to the public, meaning that, aside from the odd journalist, trade visitors virtually trickled to a halt. Instead, vast hordes of random people more than made up for it in quantity, if not necessarily quality — at least from a businessman’s point of view. One major group of visitors, however, I did not expect: as Frankfurt’s top event in the comics calendar, the Fair has been adopted by the rabid role-playing manga and anime fans, vast hordes of whom showed up in costumes ranging from simple to incredibly elaborate. Photography was permitted (with permission, always readily granted), and on a sunny day the central Plaza outdoors and, of course, the Comics area itself in Hall 3.0 provided rich hunting grounds for snaphounds. Next time, I’m bringing along my 50mm prime portrait lens and an external flash! Take a look at the gallery on my personal pages.