The World According To Me: Ten things I'll miss about the Fira

Chairs that are bolted to the floor, outdoor escalators, the impossible geometry of Hall 4...

So farewell then Fira de Montjuic. We'll miss you, even though we Anglophones don't know how to pronounce you.

Next year MWC de-camps further up the road to the snappily titled Centre Comercial Gran Via 2. I haven't been there. I'm told it's big and square. A little like Russell Buckley*.

I've also heard there's no metro service there yet, and that the Spanish are hoping to have a stop built by next February. If they don't, the queue for taxis will go into space, and there will be people at the back for whom time moves more slowly according to Einstein's law of relativity. They will thus age at a different speed from those at the front.

But they will still look like they are white men in their 40s as this is the rule at MWC.

I'm sure the new venue is roomier and better equipped than the present location, but it won't have its charm. So here's a round-up of the things I'll miss about the Fira:

1. Pooing issues
Don't get me wrong, I sort myself out first thing in the morning. But have you seen the poor souls queuing for the littlest room, their faces a mixture of anguish and physical pain? It's hard not to laugh. There were 65,000 people at MWC this year, of which 64,500 must be men. And there were just a few dozen toilets. It's not easy being female in mobile, but God do they look smug when they're swanning in and out of the WCs, pooing how and when they like ('how they like'? Really don't know what I mean by that).

2. CBoss girls and their fans
A change of location won't stop CBoss, everyone's favourite Russian OSS providers, from presenting its girly show every hour. But there'll be something sad about their re-location from Hall 1. They belong there somehow, with their joyless dead-eyed stares and weird Ming The Merciless outfits.

3. Chairs that are bolted to the ground
What is it with those chairs on the way to Hall 7? I so desperately want to take a screwdriver to their legs and free them forever. And now I will never get the chance. That's so sad, it breaks my heart.

4. Stupid hall numbering
Why is the courtyard called Hall 3? It's not a hall. And why were the new halls unveiled this year called Z3, Z4, Z5 and Z6? It's confusing, which brings me on to…

5. The Mythical Hall 3.1
Did you have a meeting in Hall 3.1? Did you find it? Are you still looking now, 24 hours after the show is over? There is zero signage for this zone, which is nowhere near Hall 3 (which is not a hall, but a courtyard: see above). I did find it in the end. And get this: the place is full of naked supermodels handing out free beer and pizza. There are also some meeting rooms.

6. A horse made from phones
MWC has been crying out for a horse made from phones for years. Thank you Huawei for making this equine touchscreen a reality. Please bring it back in all its charming naffness next year.

7. Fountains/Palace
Yes, Birmingham's NEC is a wonderful life-enhancing place, but where Birmingham has Solihull, the Fira has a fuck-off regal palace.

8. The Hall 4 spiral ramp
Sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein wrote a famous short story called 'And He Built a Crooked House' about an architect who designs an impossible house shaped like a four-dimensional tesseract. People get lost, see themselves coming in when they are leaving and so on. He based it on the weird geometry of Hall 4, which is also a shrine to car park enthusiasts.

9. Outdoor escalators
If you're British, you marvel at anything electrical outdoors.

10. Hideous biscuits
The media zone is generous enough to provide biscuits. But never has the appearance of a snack and its actual flavour been more disconnected. You see rich dark chocolate wrapped around a sweet crunchy biscuit base. You get... nothing. The taste is not horrible, it just isn't there. Well, not in the dozens that I ate.

* Russell, I'm joking. You're not that big.

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Not Gran Via 2, which is a shopping centre, but un-numbered Gran Via, which is a convention centre in the middle of skyscraper and motorway world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Via_(Barcelona)

There is a sort of metro -- it's three stops from Placa d'Espanya on so-called Line 8 (station is Fira Europa). It only takes 10 minutes but all the trains start from Espanya, so everyone will have to pour out of lines 1 and 2 there and funnel onto that platform. 70,000 people on the Monday morning. Hmmm.

And no offsite bars, restaurants or cafés in the immediate neighbourhood. At least none that I could see when i went for a look during a spare hour between meetings last Sunday afternoon.

Mar 2nd 2012 at 5:40PM

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