Throwback: Frankfurt Book Fair 2019

Hello bookworms,

even though I'm not really an outgoing type, I'm missing some things and events like crazy at the moment. One of them are conventions and book fairs, but all that I'd planned to visit in 2020 have been cancelled. So I thought why not post a little throwback to last year when everything was still normal? In October 2019, I visited the Frankfurt Book Fair, aka the world's biggest book convention, for the first time, and here's my little report!

I visited the fair with two friends, one of them lives near Frankfurt and we slept at hers (shoutout to Sue from Aeppelwoi Meets Astra!) So on Saturday morning when it was still dark, my flight took off. The fair always runs several days, but we only were there on Saturday and Sunday because the earlier days it's only open to the press and officials like authors, publishers and booksellers. The three of us were cosplaying the whole weekend, so before we left, we got ready. On Saturday, we were dressed as the Disney princesses Ariel, Belle and Snow White. It was fun to take the train wearing a cosplay, and I even met another Ariel cosplayer at the fair!

The fair itself is huge, there are several halls full of books - and people. It's honestly so crowded, and hot, and you have to be careful not to lose your friends. Luckily, I stood out from the crowd with my bright red wig! We looked around the halls, especially interested in the ya publishers' stalls, and my friend Sue also met some of her blogger friends. There's a big open space in between the halls where you can buy all kinds of food, so we went outside for a break from all the chaos. 

Back in October 2019 the new Hunger Games book, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, hadn't been published yet, but at the publisher's stall we saw this countdown that I of course had to take a pic of! We also saw a lot of cosplayers and I bought a book called Unstern ("Not-star") by German author Katrin Ils. It turned out to be really good! Unfortunately it hasn't been translated. In the evening we took the train back to my friend's house and got pizza for dinner.

On Sunday, we dressed up as Hogwarts students. Funny enough, we're all proud Ravenclaws, so we were a little Ravenclaw squad. Of course we then had to visit the stall of the German Harry Potter publisher where they'd rebuild the Dursley stairs to promote the new German editions of the books!

In the afternoon we visited the finale of the German Cosplay Championship. I barely knew any of the characters cosplayed, but it was still fun and very impressing to see! Later, we listened to an author talk about writing and I bought another book: Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan, an adult fantasy novel. One of my friends and me wanted to participate in a little workshop where you could make your own wand, but sadly, when we got there, the room was already full and they couldn't let any more participants in. We then used the time to look at some more cosplay stuff and grab something to eat.

In the evening we were tired, our feet hurt and we'd seen more books than we could process. We collected our luggage and parted ways, and I took my flight back home. It was a very nice and exciting weekend, and I hope to visit Frankfurt Book Fair again one day - when hopefully covid is not an issue anymore and things are as back to normal as they'll get.

 Have you ever been to a book fair/book convention? Happy reading and until next time,

~ Anni