Trade Quart In IWA Pint Pot?

In early March much of the UK gun trade will set off on its annual pilgrimage to Nuremberg, there to attend the IWA show – the world’s largest shooting industry event of its kind. There they will join close to 45000 other visitors from 80 countries around the world, drawn there to see the wares of the more than 1600 exhibitors. For those members of the trade who have been attending IWA for many years, the trip is pretty straightforward; for those new to the industry or the show, things are less so. One of the reasons for this is that Nuremberg, though an enchanting and pleasant German city, is no longer able to cater for the numbers of visitors it receives at show time. Thus, the regulars learned a long time ago, that the singularly most important task to perform when checking out of their accommodation at the end of one year is to make damn sure they rebook it for following year. Not to do so is to then be condemned to join the ranks of the many visitors who end up distributed across miles of the Bavarian landscape, thus necessitating for them a long trip into and out of town at the beginning and end of each day. The coming of Airbnb as relieved some of the stress, but as regular users of that service will testify, accommodation-wise this can prove something of a lottery. The truth is that the show has outgrown its setting, but as IWA is (as far as one can tell) owned by the city of Nuremberg the prospects of change any time soon look remote. And that’s a pity because the solution lies just an hour or so to the south in the shape of Munich, which is blessed with a bang up to date exhibition complex, hotels and eateries aplenty and unlike its smaller neighbour can be reached direct by flights from every major city in the UK.