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I went, I saw, I nearly concussed myself by walking into a signpost (top tip: if trying to compare a map in one hand with an email on your phone in the other, do so while stationary), but I escaped Cebit. And here's what I learned, in pictoral form.

First, the show. It's as large as everyone says: around 30 halls, each about so big:

.. so you walk for miles and miles each day back and forth. Inside each hall there are around 200 booths. Finding the one you need is a nightmare – often it pays to get a view from above, if possible:

.. and work-wise, the show went well. Everyone's there, and once you get inside the booths and out of public view there's some fantastic new stuff planned for the next year or so, some of it secret for the time being. Outside it's a deranged mix of exhibitors (many), businesses (many), press (a few) and the public (amazingly, loads – not entirely sure why). So, the Cebit show scores 8/10. No holiday, but it does what it's there to do.

And what of Hannover? Well, it's quite nice: fairly small, but with a nice central district and some beautiful places in the old town. Get away from the "Irish" pubs, for example, and you can find little places like this:

Sadly I can't even vaguely remember what that bar's called, but you'll find it a stone's throw from the old church. Hannover itself picks up 7/10: if going as a tourist them head to Berlin instead, but it's quite nice.

So, what went wrong? Well, apart from nearly decapitating myself, the one key thing I learned is this: if going to Hannover, first purchase a map. And, preferably, a car to go with it, as the transit system is totally, utterly baffling. We spent hours standing on train platforms, in the cold, waiting for a train with that sinking feeling that comes from being entirely unsure whether it's even going to take you in the right direction:

In fact, during three days in Hannover we managed to get on the wrong train entirely (some stations, we found, had no maps, and the platforms do not list intermediate stops), the right train only to find that it was turned around and sent back the way we'd come (I was shamefully pleased that we weren't the only people caught out by this), a train that turned out to be a tram and then went underground (WTF?) and trains that, for some reason, were not covered by our tickets (not an ICE train – we knew about those, at least).

And all this on top of at least 2 hours of train travel per day because we had to come in the (reasonably nearby) town of Celle, which was similarly devoid of rail maps. Compare this to Berlin, for example, where the complicated transport system (S-Bahn, U-Bahn, trams and buses all overlapping) is cheap and easy to navigate. Hannover scores 2/10 in the "getting around without a car" category.

So all in all, last week was a mixed bag. Good show, nice city, godawful trains – oh, and really, really bad coffee. Still after four days, it was time to leave:

.. and I can't tell you how good it is to be back in London. I may not complain about SouthEastern Railways ever again.

Technology trade shows are really, really odd. Most include dozens of halls, thousands of people, not all of whom seem to have any reason at all to attend, millions of electronic doodads worth approximately bazillions of dollars and all soon for the landfill, REALLY ANNOYINGLY LOUD NOISE, meetings conducted despite language difficulties and, every few hours, bizarre bits of advertising-cross-performance-art like the one snapped above (from IFA Berlin, 2006, more pictures on Flickr if you click it). Reporting from shows is a test of your walking shoes, the tenacity of your laptop's wifi adapter and your ability to function with very limited sleep, while flying back home again is usually a great relief.

The biggest tech show in the world is Cebit, held annually in Hannover (Wikipedia has all the baffling visitor and square footage figures), but so far I'd always managed to avoid attending. Not this year, though. My rucksack is once again full of electronic crap, tickets have been booked and I fly out tomorrow.

Photos of confused looking people milling around in one of many exhibition halls will follow shortly. In the meantime, I'll be covering the whole thing – wifi and 3G permitting – on Twitter, here.