Passing through passport control at Düsseldorf took me less time than it took the EU passengers to get through. Why wasn't that written on the side of the Brexit bus?
The event itself went well from my perspective, in that I wasn't murdered for suggesting that some elements of what people expect of the Metaverse might not be a good idea for games. Five people in the room knew who I was (myself included) and the rest were wondering why an old man had been wheeled out to talk to them. I think I impressed them with the fact that I play a lot of MMOs.
The venue was the Schloss Krickenbeck. It was formally a castle (because it formerly was one), but we'd call it a stately home in the UK. It was quite pretty.
There were free alcoholic drinks everywhere, which wasn't much use to me but there were also free sweets everywhere, too. Those were a much closer match to my requirements. There were two kinds that we don't have in the UK, a chewy white mouse foamy thing and some sticks of what appeared to be made of sherbert triple the strength of Swizzles. I'm going to hunt some down on Amazon.
The flight home took off late but arrived on time. However, we had to disembark onto a bus that took 15 minutes to get to the terminal.
Leaving the short-term parking, I joined a queue behind a vehicles that broke down at the barrier. I had to reverse and push into another exit line, immediately behind another car that didn't break down but the driver hadn't paid for his parking. When I finally made it to the M25, it took twice as long to drive 60 miles to the A12 exit than it had taken to fly from Düsseldorf to Heathrow. Friday at 5:30pm is not the best time to be taking that road.
All in all, it was a short trip but well worth it because I got to talk to and at game developers for hours and hours.