This was my 20th or so Boot Show. I never quite loved it, but I was always irresistibly drawn to it. This cognitive dissonance was beginning to grow into an itch for me to explain, not least to myself, and finally, the penny dropped. What I find is that the show is clinically effective. It is a top-trimmed apparatus. Every detail is taken care of, and the organisation runs a very tight ship. It is a showcase of German effectiveness, a well-oiled, finely tuned machine. 

A ground-breaking project launched in 2022 has revealed 31 previously unknown shipwrecks lying on the bed of Lake Constance (Bodensee), offering a rare glimpse into the region’s maritime history. Using advanced mapping and robotic explorations, researchers have begun to uncover centuries of trading, travel and even wartime loss beneath the waters of this Alpine lake. 

After a corona-imposed two-year hiatus, the megashow was back on, and what a resurgence it was. After I landed on a morning flight, I jumped on the bus that went from the airport to the expo complex. The route went almost all around the complex in a clockwise fashion before we got to Eingang Nord, or the North entrance, which was my stop.

“Despite the difficult general conditions, boot 2023 has written a success story. We would not have dreamt of this outcome. boot has finally reached calm waters and is once again firmly anchored in its Düsseldorf home port. The successful comeback has demonstrated that trade fairs ‘made in Düsseldorf’ have an international appeal,” stated Wolfram Diener, President and CEO of Messe Düsseldorf.

The shipwreck, which has been found to be about 375 years old, was found nearly 36 feet beneath the surface of the Trave River - a river in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, which flows into the Baltic Sea at Travemünde. The ship was found during routine measurements of the river by the local waterway and shipping authority which detected an anomaly at the river bottom using a multibeam echosounder.