Luxury, Please—Kitchens, Cars and Kings

When I was still working for Poggenpohl Kitchens, back in November 2007, they decided to present their new Porsche Design Kitchen at the Luxury, Please fair in Vienna. They were also looking for three people to present the kitchen and explain its features to prospective customers. I immediately volunteered—I loved the kitchen and had sufficient English skills to talk to international clients. I had always been on good terms with the CEO of Poggenpohl Austria, so he said I could go and off I went, on the train to Vienna, along with a colleague from Switzerland and another from Austria.

Over the next three days I experienced a lot of things: I fell in love with a kitchen and a car, and I met a real African king.

Every year in November, the Luxury, Please fair turns the imperial halls of the Hofburg in Vienna into an exclusive, 4,000sq m showroom for luxury cars, yachts, jewelry, furniture, accessories etc. One could also call it a huge luxury playground for the rich and famous. 

When we arrived at the Hofburg, what I saw was beautiful but grotesque: wonderful red wall-to-wall carpeting, marble staircases, shiny chandeliers, a lot of men in suits and then—planes in the driveway, cars on the carpet, yachts on marble floors. Not something you see every day. 

Our Poggenpohl stand was right across the entrance, opposite the Lamborghini stand—so my colleagues and I could ogle the cars while working our stand. Luckily enough, people were extremely interested in our kitchen and from time to time I was also able to use my English skills, like when I explained all our kitchen’s advantages to a Russian man who looked like the incarnation of a typical Christmas nutcracker (I’m dead serious—naturally, I would have laughed, but by then I had learned: the richer the people, the stranger their clothes).

Once, I was outside in the parking lot, getting some fresh air and taking my numb heels for a walk, and I suddenly saw a group of busy-looking men in black suits and sunglasses (what else?) striding across the lot towards the entrance. It was like a movie scene: they were shielding an obviously very important person. I couldn’t help but think of the FBI, CIA, MI5, MI6 and the Austrian COBRA—all rolled into one. I hadn't expected anything like that. If I had been expecting an “important” person striding across the parking lot of the Hofburg, my guess would have been the Austrian President, Heinz Fischer, who lives there.

This man however, dark-skinned and clothed in a golden tunic, holding a scepter in its left hand and something that looked like an ancient feather duster in  his right, had clearly no resemblance to Heinz Fischer. I sprinted inside and told my colleagues excitedly about “some African king” right here in the Hofburg; they shot each other meaningful looks (meaning: “Now she’s gone crazy”) and just said: “Yeah, right.” We all thought this was a joke—it had to be, considering the chances of actually meeting an African king at a luxury fair in Austria. Well, it turned out it wasn’t—the king was real. Hadj Sheriff Issa Nassirou Bouraima, king of a tribe in Benin, and his visit to the fair were all over the news the next day, and my colleagues had to admit I had been right—and hadn't gone crazy.

After those three days at the Luxury, Please fair, I had decided on my future kitchen (a Porsche Design kitchen, of course), spotted my future car (a black Lamborghini Gallardo) and met a real African king.

But take my advice: don’t ever go there—luxury furniture business messes with your mind; it makes you want things you’ll never be able to afford; it makes you wanna be a billionaire.