Frankfurt Buchmesse

Last week, the students on my program (and some of the professors) went to Germany.

The main reason for the trip was to go to the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Photo by Juliana

This was not a book-lover's heaven, as you might have expected. "Book Fair" sounds like an amazing, fantastical place, like Powell's Books only floating on a cloud. Or something.

It's basically a place for publishers and printers to talk shop and make deals and get the rights to translations. Also, if you want to buy something, you can't until the last day, or if you are talking to a very nice person and smiling and begging a lot. So really it's kind of like a book-lover's hell, seeing all these things and not being able to buy anything.

(Really good for the student wallet, though.)

It's also a place to introduce new gadgets. For example, we found an eReader we hadn't heard of, the Hanvon WISEreader, which was cheaper than we expected and looked to be at least as good as the two we had seen in class. (I still hate how they flash the negative of the page to mimic page-turning, though. I think they should just have a bar slide across the screen or something.)

We were less impressed with the OnlineMag and OnlineBook, basically a PDF that can show videos and has a slightly niftier bookmarking option. I see the draw for promotional material, but other than that it didn't seem like a very clever answer to the question "what is going to happen to print?"

We were more impressed with a Spanish company, Moleiro, which makes facsimiles of manuscripts, only better. Down to the last detail. If a page in the original manuscript was made from two pieces of parchment stitched together, than the reproduction page is also stitched together, by hand.

I was also impressed with a Czech textbook I spent some time poring over.

What I enjoyed the most, though, was the international experience.

The expo center (I guess that's what the venue is) is probably the most enormous complex I have ever been to, and it is full of stands from pretty much every country in the world.

I went to the area for Italian publishers, and it was full of Italians, talking and gesturing on their telefoninos. It was like stepping into Italy.

I spoke and heard so much Spanish it was amazing. This was due to spending time with my Colombian friend Juliana, who really got us into the stands and into conversations with the people working them.

There was a big Dutch section where people were speaking Dutch, and at the Norwegian book stands, people were speaking Norwegian.

I found the Czech stand and looked at all sorts of books and thought about how I should be able to read these titles, but can't. I looked out for any Peter Sis translations, too, but didn't see any. So I sat and looked at that Czech course for quite a while, while Juliana and Chiara rested their feet.

Photo by Juliana

It was so much fun to step from one country into another, or, more precisely, one language into another. So, although it was maybe not a book-lover's heaven, it was perhaps something close to a linguist's paradise.