Ever watch the show Wings?  Well...the Champaign, IL airport is about that size.  I like it because getting through security is easy and you really only have to show up like 45 minutes before the flight time and you're fine.  We then had a flight from Chicago to Frankfurt and I can assure you that 8 hours on a single flight is a long time, but it does go by a bit easier when you have friends around to chat with.
We arrived in Frankfurt at about 11am on the day before the show opens and then took the ICE train, which travels near 200mph, getting us into Cologne around 2pm.  The booths were mainly setup so we headed over to make sure things were all ready for the first day of the show.
After spending a couple of hours getting things setup and tested, we headed off to the hotel to get some much needed rest...the first day of the show begins at 7:30am for us.