A highlight of the show is the Thursday night ‘lock in’ party.  After the show closes for the night, tables are laid out along one aisle, and each country presents its food and drink for inspection and consumption.  There are some highlights – the German US N-Track chilli was wonderful this year.  And the Swiss raclette.  Some may also enjoy the Danish picked curried raw herring, washed down with schnapps, but I wouldn’t know about that.

As Brexit doesn’t allow us to take out our usual barrel of Sussex ale, Richard came up with the idea of a traditional English tea shop.  This went down very well.  Perhaps not so much the tea, but the wonders of Eccles cakes, battenberg, and cherry bakewell  were a new experience for some of our European brethren.  In fact, there wasn’t much left for the team to eat on Friday.  So here we are…..

And here are some of the other offerings….

While we were there, Claus Ballsiepet celebrated his 50th birthday.  Claude is from Minitrix, and a few years ago generously donated the expander tracks that we are currently using on the layout.

There was, however, a nasty pollution incident in the Mosel valley….

Changing the subject completely, the balcony around the hall was full of Lego.  In fact, the display started outside Hall 1, with this half size Bugatti supercar.  Lot of blue bricks here….

Two enormous ships (the battleship is one of the WWII trio that included the Bismark.)

Construction machinery….

And some fantastic (and realistic) trains…

Star Wars (I think…..)

Well, that’s Stuttgart done and dusted for another year.  Time to get a little modelling done before Christmas?