i spent the last two days in the Cologne Exhibition Centre (koelnmesse) to go to FIBO, which stands for FItness BOdybuilding, which is the world’s biggest fitness trade show/exhibition. the koelnmesse is a train stop that i’ve passed by on trains numerous times in the past many years in Germany, but i have never actually been there.

that place is huge. the expo was in more than 10 halls, though the floor plan doesn’t make much sense to me. there was a dedicated HYROX hall, to which i failed to get race tickets; two of the biggest German supplement brands got their own halls; half of a hall was filled with reformer pilates equipments; a future of fitness hall with interesting technology and software solutions; countless gym equipments and recovery devices; et cetera. i think i didn’t manage to enter two of the halls cos there was just too much.

my first day there was my free day, i arrived shortly before the opening time at 9am and stayed till 6pm when they closed. i felt dehydrated and borderline thought i was gonna faint some time in the afternoon because it was so hard to find water and i thought i needed more food though i had lunch. there was a lot of samples to taste but they are mostly chemicals anyway, though i probably also hit my protein goal of the day. i think the best thing i tasted was flavoured egg whites that tasted like a normal drink but kind of less heavy than a milk shake, if that makes sense. all of the protein bars tasted similar. the coolest technology i discovered is this Korean virtual playground technology, where a projector displays a playing field and i was doing a fitness competition with the exhibitors at 10am. the exercises were some speed drills, jumps, burpees. it got very competitive between me and one of the guys… i think we got a joint no1 haha. i bought some stuff and was hauling two bags on my shoulders, that were eventually filled with more samples, goodies and brochures. i could barely feel any parts of my body at the end… thankfully i didn’t have to commute back to my friend’s place after that. mentally i was also gone.

the second day was filled with programmes because it was a women’s summit thing. it began with a networking walk at a very normal hour of 8am, which meant i had to leave my friend’s place at 6:40am. we were given a card with 6 questions and then paired up: one person asks the other a question, the second person had to then talk for 5 minutes while the other listens with no judgement. yeah, one of those workshops. we were also not allowed to talk about our job positions and what we do, so to forge deep connections. yeap, fun stuff on a friday morning. luckily it wasn’t very cold. sorry i had to make fun of it a little bit, nevertheless it was in fact authentic mand i might have made some meaningful connections. there was a lounge for us where we could hang out with beverages so i felt less dead today. the servers had trays with orange juice, champagne and “mixed.” my brilliant brain thought that mixed meant mixed juices, like orange + apple or whatever. so i was tipsy at about 1:30pm. had a lot of fun getting to know people from different backgrounds, doing very interesting things. i left to go home at around 7:30pm. but the train that’s supposed to go at 20:15 had a delay of 40 minutes, so i had dinner at Burger King. maybe because i was mainly having “healthy” high protein stuff (there were protein bars in the lounge) and not enough calories, i spent almost 20€ on fast food, lol.

i am currently training for a hyrox race that is in five weeks, and i wanted to go to the gym today. however, my body is telling me no. maybe it’s my age catching up but 2.5 days of talking to strangers in foreign environments took a much bigger toll than i expected. i haven’t felt this tired in so long. it was a very good experience all in all and i wanted to convey more but i seem to not even have the energy to feel things now. brb spamming more water into my system.