Unforgettable.
In a word, I’d have to say that’s the one that best sums up my trip to Agritechnica in Han-over, Germany, two weeks ago.
The sheer scale of the show — 24 buildings on a 100-acre site, each packed with the latest in ag machinery, 450,000 visitors, 26 kilometres of carpet, 120,000 schnitzel served — is nearly impossible to imagine until you’ve seen it for yourself.
WP managing editor Mike Raine, a veteran of three previous Agritechnica shows, attempted to prepare me for what we were about to encounter this year.
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It helped that we took a rather circuitous route to the show, one that afforded us ample time to strategize on just how we would go about covering this monster.
One of our stops was London’s Heathrow airport, one of the busiest airports in the world where 84 different airlines move more than 200,000 people through here on a daily basis.
It was in Heathrow’s Terminal 1 where we found ourselves having breakfast Sunday morning at the Tin Goose pub.
A nearby TV showed the Queen laying a wreath at a cenotaph as part of the United Kingdom’s official Remembrance Day ceremonies.
Shortly before 11 a.m., a female voice came over the Terminal’s PA system to tell us there would be two minutes of silence beginning at 11 a.m.
When the two minutes of silence began I was amazed to see virtually everyone come to a complete stop. Hundreds of people stopped talking, the men at the bar were up off their stools, and some nearby shoppers even stood with their heads bowed.
You could hear a pin drop.
I hadn’t even yet made it to Germany and already I was in awe of what I was seeing.
That sense of awe would continue throughout the week as I explored all Agritechnica had to offer, including at least a couple of those 120,000 schnitzel.
There were tractors mounted on the walls, sprayers half the width of a football field, and equipment of every conceivable type on stages that would rival those of the Rolling Stones in complexity.
But as incredible as all that spanking new machinery was my experience at Heathrow was every bit its equal.
Seems everywhere I went in Europe something spectacular was in store.
All of it unforgettable.
