Hanover - City on the Vistula

A dozen or so years ago, when I started my adventure with object coverings, the centre of annual meetings of people from the industry was the Poznań International Fair Budma. It was there, in the more or less freezing January, that almost all people connected with the industry met every year. The merry bunch warmed themselves on stands laden with warm carpet patterns, and sometimes assisted in this warming with all sorts of liquor products. All in cultural forms and quantities, of course.

After a hiatus of several years, I went to Poznań to see what it looked like now. Unfortunately, it turned out that not much is happening there. Budma had turned into a bazaar for individual customers, who were tempted by sweets, leaflets, balloons and the sight of hoards of young hostesses in almost circus-like clothes and in obligatory skirts not reaching their navels. The highlight of the visit was the exhibition at the Arsenal city gallery in the Old Market. Had it not been for that, the trip would have been a disaster.

Returning to this thread, someone might ask where this merry band of professionals could have gone. I can answer that now: at the Domotex trade fair in Hannover. There, in three exhibition pavilions, among a dozen or so, in the centre of the world's flooring trade, you will find almost the entire Polish elite of the object flooring industry. You can meet them everywhere: at the entrance, at the stand, in the restaurant, in the toilets, in the aisles, in the cloakroom and in the smoking area. I didn't look everywhere, so I don't know where else they were. They were watching, presenting, negotiating. I met as many people during my 48-hour stay as I would have met in Poland after a murderous car rally around Poland for over a week.

Now I know that my homeland is also there - Hanover almost on the Vistula.