Going to Essen tomorrow!

Tomorrow is a big day in my gaming-calendar: The Spiel 2010 in Essen starts!
I assume, that “Spiel” or “Essen” don’t ring any bells with quite a few of my readers here at Stargazer’s World, especially the non-european ones. So let me explain:
The “Spiel” (German for “game” or “play”) is an annual gaming fair held in the west German city of Essen. While you will find Roleplaying games, miniature Wargames, comics and lots of other stuff in the halls, the thing that the Spiel is really famous for, are Board- and Cardgames. For Boardgames, especially the so called “Eurogame”-variety (games in the vein of Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, El Grande, Agricola etc.), this is THE event of the year. Gamers from all over the world come to Germany each October, to be able to be the first to see and play the newest games – and of course to go shopping. The name of the fair and the name of the city where it takes place are often used interchangeably and if you tell a hard-core boardgamer, that you are going to Essen, he will know, that you are visiting the Spiel.

The Spiel (officially “Internationale Spieletage”) is held in mid-octobre each year. This year it will be from 21st to 24th of October and, being in the luxurious position of living only about two hours by car from Essen, I will be driving there tomorrow morning.

Originally I wanted to give you a bigger preview to what new games I am looking forward to, but somehow ran out of time. And since I don’t have the time to write any more tonight (going to see Sting at the Frankfurt Festhalle in two hours…yay!), I will try to give you a bit of an update in the next few days – though I guess that I will be busy gaming. 🙂
In the meantime, if you are really interested, you can see my “watchlist” here. Beware that it is basically a notepad for me and my notes are in german (though the videos and rules I linked are mostly english).
If you want to see some of the newest games: Aldie, Derk & the Crew from BoardGameGeek have their own booth at Essen and will be streaming interviews, demos and shameless bragging about the latest purchases throughout the fair. Check it out here.