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I don’t know if I ever learned to say “goodbye” in German so that will have to do.  The word around town is that yesterday (Saturday) was essentially the last day of the fair, or at least for us in the English-language hall.  The hall is officially open to the public and much of the exhibit staff in most booths have already started to pack their free totes and suitcases for the trek home—wherever home may be.

For us, we have one more day in the exhibit hall, set to open in about an hour and a half.  Since the “business” has more or less concluded, we have a great opportunity to take in all that we’ve seen and accomplished over the fair.  A fair like Frankfurt seems less of a business trip, and more of a pilgrimage.  In fact almost everywhere we went, the introduction was some form of, “and this is Seth—it’s his first Frankfurt,” which was almost always followed by genuine interest of my impression of what I’ve seen so far.  Frankfurt seems such a part of the lives of these publishing professionals—the people scheduling meetings, making sales, throwing or going to parties—that even though they have no say over who attends the fair itself, they worry about its future and care enough about its past that they do take a genuine interest in what a “Frankfurt virgin” thinks of the whole experience.  I must tell you:  this industry of ours is like a big family, and each year Frankfurt is like a 300 thousand family member reunion that I’d be happy to be a part of whenever I can.

So I’ll begin my true reflection as I’m packing books and panels, and taking one last lap around…well, around wherever my legs can carry me to, and quite frankly that’s not very far.  But I know when I get on the plane tomorrow (finally!), I won’t feel like I’m leaving Frankfurt, Germany, but that I’m leaving The Frankfurt International Book Fair.