WorldWide Drilling Resource

12 JUNE 2016 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® bauma 2016 = Bold...Awesome... Ultimate...Mega...and More Awesome!!! by Carol and Marcel Schimpf, WorldWide Drilling Resource ® Boarding our plane for the 9½ hours to Munich, we were excited, but not anticipating the long, cramped journey. The flight was uneventful, and we arrived on Saturday morning slightly jet lagged, but with our luggage intact and ready to explore! After a long taxi ride, we arrived at the hotel right in the heart of Munich and checked in. Our room was perfect, but we noticed when we turned on the air conditioning, only heat blew out. Checking at the desk, we were told the hotel had not yet turned on the air conditioning because they still had some cool nights. The only solution was to open the huge windows and let in the cool breeze. We did so, and the windows stayed open for our entire stay. Rather than submitting to the jet lag and the seven-hour time change, we decided the best cure was to do some walking since we had the first day to ourselves. Munich was, as it was three years before, gracious and welcoming, crowded with people on the streets, in the squares, and on the public transportation, enjoying the mild weather and shopping before the stores closed for Sunday. We paced ourselves and did some sightseeing, such as Marienplatz, Hofbräuhaus, and other inner city places of interest. We ended the first day back at the hotel with nice drinks and a huge, freshly baked pretzel. On Sunday, we awoke somewhat early and decided on an educational day at the Deutsches Museum, housed in a beautiful old building, which surely must have been a palace or the home of someone important. Huge rooms of displays covering everything from ancient travel to steam engines to an actual mining experience surprised us in each new section. Information on plaques was usually in German and English to make exhibits ac- cessible to all visitors. Even though we didn’t get to all the exhibits in half a day, we decided we were leaving richer in knowledge than we came, so we went to find a restaurant. A real Bavarian restaurant was nearby, so we en- joyed some local fare and refreshed ourselves for the rest of the day. Monday was the grand opening! We readied ourselves early and caught the U-Bahn for the 30-minute trip to the show. As expected, it was packed, and we had to wait for the next train because there was simply no more room for us to squeeze in on the first one. Arriving at our last stop, we disembarked and fell in with the crowd walking toward the entrance some distance away. Already, the conglom- eration of various voices and languages was the first hint this was truly a worldwide event! Directed to the second floor for our press passes, we were able to avoid the rush as a crowd of more than 580,000 visitors from 200 countries moved through the turnstiles to enter the show. We moved out to the sec- ond floor overlook and were glad to be above rather than amidst the crowd! Since the weather promised to be sunny, we decided to cover the out- side area of bauma first and cover the inside exhibits on Tuesday. With over 3423 exhibitors from 58 countries in attendance, we had a lot of ground to cover. We walked over nine miles to meet as many exhibitors as possible (there were no comfortable shoes, even if they started out that way!) Beginning at one corner, we walked all the aisles, finding our first company, Atlas Copco, where we chatted with representatives who were already busy with customers. After snapping some photos, we continued down the aisles coming uponAstec Group. This time, we were lucky to find a representative who had time to show us the new equipment and tell us their expectations for the show. Walking further, we discovered an area rich in drill rig companies. There we met and chatted with many old friends, such as AmericanAugers, Soilmec, and Casagrande, and made some new friends also.