Interpreting in Germany

A few weeks ago I've got a very interesting proposal from the manager at my mom's workplace: he asked me to interpret for him during the Anuga trade fair, which is held in Cologne, Germany. In return, he paid for all my expenses.

Before the trip, we were considering whether we should go by plane or by car. At the end, because of the very expensive plane tickets, we decided to go by car. We've had a twelve hour long trip before us on the 8th of October, at 4am, when Róbert (my mom's boss) came to pick me up. The journey was very interesting and exhausting at the same time. If I had to describe Germany in three words, they would be: highways, cool cars and solar panels. You can get everywhere in Germany, without leaving the highway once!  Also, almost every house has solar panels on the roof! (Well it makes sense, since as far as I know the government supports the installation of such devices over there...) In the end, it took us thirteen hours to get to the destination because of numerous road constructions scattered around Austria and Germany. 

Our accomodation was around 60 kilometres from Cologne, in Wuppertal, at Etap hotel. Our room was a bit small, but it was enough for the two of us. We had our own toilet and shower, and we didn't have to sleep on bunk beds, like the other Hungarian guys on the second floor. The hotel had free wi-fi access as well, so we could check our emails and keep in contact with our friends. We had dinner at a local pizzeria, and went to sleep arout 9pm.

We got up at 6:50am, had breakfast and left for the fair. We got there in 35 minutes! (Again I would like to emphasize that you can get anywhere in Germany via highway. Actually, we got to the fair by going on three different highways, on a 60 kilometer trip!) Koelnmesse (the building complex in which Anuga took place) is HUGE. There are eleven halls, the smallest of which is around 8 thousand square metres, and the largest is around 22 thousand. We were walking non-stop for about 8 hours, and we could finish only 3 halls, and the bottom two floors of the fourth.

Front entrance of the bulding complex

 The negotiations were quite successful, Róbert ran out of business cards around two hours before we left the place. Interpreting was not hard, no sophisticated language was needed, though I have to admit, at the beginning, I've felt awkward and shy. Luckily, these feelings went away after the third or fourth stand we wisited. We felt really tired at the end of the day. We decided to have dinner at the same place as the day before, this is where we met the other two Hungarian guys I mentioned about earlier. We went to bed a bit late that day.

Between two halls

Next day, we decided to go for a quicker approach, so when we liked something, we just took a prospect, and we didn't stop, unless it was absolutely necessary. We only stopped at three places for a longer time, an Italian cookie making company, a company making instant chai tea powder (chai tea is a kind of tea from India, you can see some recipes here: http://www.chai-tea.org/recipes.html ) and a Belgian chicken-meat exporting company.

Ham-pyramid in one of the halls

We started our journey back at around 15:30. In the end, the 12 hour trip turned out to be 14, because there was a traffic accident on the highway some kilometres after Frankfurt, we were  for two hours. Finally, we arrived home at around 5am, and full of thougts, experiences and being dead tired, I fell into my bed and went to sleep.