Scenes from the shareholders meeting: Berkshire and Buffett enthusiasts rejoice at an event in Omaha | Warren Buffett

He went to town Friday at 11:30 pm, grabbed food and, shortly after midnight, snuggled up against a prominent spot to get to the annual meeting of shareholders.

"I want to be in the front row on the floor so I can get the best view of Bill Gates, the directors, Charlie and Warren," he said. "It turns into a crazy race for the ground seats."

He was quickly joined by thousands of others sipping a coffee, chatting and meeting like – minded types of investors. Once the doors opened at 7 am, Dastmalchian was part of the mass who fled to the arena where the meeting was to take place.

Others – over 42,000 were expected for Berkshire's activities this year – went to the exhibition hall where the Berkshire companies exhibited their products.

Here is an example of how Berkies spent the day:

For Mike Miltenberger, it was number 19. For his wife, Isabella, it was his 13th year of attendance at Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meetings.

What makes them come back?

"It helps to build your philosophy, prevents you from being carried away by crazy ideas," said Miltenberger of Wichita.

He said that he had heard a lot of advice and wisdom from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger over the decades. This year, he said he liked a witty remark, Buffett was wrong about enjoying a good idea, but not at any price.

Isabella said that she loved the work meeting almost as much as the races.

Her husband shouted: "It's the Boot-shire Hathway meeting. She likes boots. "

Of course, Nan Dong and Wenjing Cao love Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Queuing to see the leaders of Berkshire Hathaway – outside, for five hours starting at 2 am – bears witness to how much.

But the two Chinese natives have also made their annual adventure an intriguing affair.

"When you stand in line, you make friends," Dong said. "Next year, they will contact you:" Can you help us plan your stay at this hotel, this restaurant … "

So was born the small job that started as a freebie for new friends, but now brings some money back to Dong and Cao, who both studied at the University of Nebraska in Omaha and who now live. the hometown of Buffett. Cao, 24, has been here for five years and Dong, 28, for eight years.

Women said they enjoy taking advantage of creating routes for future Chinese shareholders. They organize dinners in Buffett's favorite restaurants, engage interpreters, act primarily as local guides and ambassadors of people in their place years ago.

The places not to be missed, they say, include: Buffett House, Berkshire Headquarters, UN campus, Village Pointe shops. And Costco. (Chinese tourists like to witness this business model, said the women.)

Speaking of shopping, said Cao, she will do a lot of herself at the Berkshire company's kiosks on Saturday, after hearing Buffett and Munger. Their quick arrival ensured a suitable place in the arena.

"We want to watch these millionaires from the United States," said Cao.

When you see three young investors cracking sandwiches in the back of the CHI exhibition hall, it's probably the lunch break at Berkshire Hathaway's question and answer session.

Austin Wagner, 24, Pat Baird, 26, and Jeff Vandendriessche, 31, arrived at the scene at 5:10. They were hungry, but they did not want to miss the financial rumors Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger .

It was a first annual meeting for Vandendriessche, Minnesota. "Buffett and Munger are so ready," he said. "They do not ruin the answers."

Baird, of South Dakota, said, "I love Charlie's franchise and humor. They did not miss a beat. "

The young men (Wagner's also from South Dakota) were amused by Berkshire's exchanges on Bitcoin. And they wanted more details about Berkshire's estate plan.

"Given their age," said Baird, "everyone wants to see a form of succession plan."

Among the participants on the second day were Irv Black from Philadelphia, who arrived alone at 3:50 pm, but soon became friends with Chris Tesari of Los Angeles.

The two men came to Omaha with their wives, who chose not to do the morning trek until the CHI health center.

Black, who has qualified as a beginner to the game, said his wife and son would join him later in the arena, where Buffett and Munger were answering questions for more than five hours.

For Tesari, a long-time shareholder, it was his 23rd year at the annual meeting.

"It was a lot easier before," he said laughing about browsing a Berkshire shareholder meeting. "Every year he seems to be getting bigger and bigger."

Just before the doors opened at 7 am, the questions kept coming up.

Would everyone have the right to participate in the great Berkshire show?

"It's hard to say with so many people that you're going to enter the arena," warned a member of the event team who was at the end of a huge line behind downtown.

Michigan residents Harry, 71, Cheryl, 70, and Lauren Rosinski, 39, were surprised by the crowd.

"It's quite amazing that all these people come here to see him (Buffett)," said Harry Rosinski. "It's almost like a cult."

The family was counting on a hail, Mary: A friend had arrived at 5 am and hoped that with his best position online, he could reserve him some places for the question-and-answer session.

"It's really an experience," said Cheryl Rosinski. "It's not just coming to a meeting. It's an event.

Dan Carter, 24, and Ben John, 26, have not come all that way from London to pick up bad places on the biggest day in Berkshire.

"I just want to see the two of them (Buffett and Munger) in the flesh," Carter said.

The two men left on Saturday at 2 am and prepared to queue for several hours.

"We're on British time anyway, so it's pretty easy to wake up," Carter said.

Carter wrapped himself in a sleeping bag and John seated himself on a chair, his hat Berkshire Hathaway recently bought on his head.

This is the first meeting for both.

They shopped Friday, taking care of seeing See's sweets.

And they made the pilgrimage to Warren Buffett – where Carter saw a security guard looking at him through the trees.

By 5 am Saturday, lines with four different entrances were beginning to spread to the front of the CHI health center arena.

Berkshire early risers grabbed cups of coffee. They brought blankets and sleeping bags and stared at the laptops.

Some brought chairs and snacks, others comfortable shoes and their shareholder's badge hanging on their necks.

Shareholders who arrived after 6 am Saturday found themselves at the back of the downtown arena.

The growth line in the grassy area sparked big eyes, worry and at least a bit of a good-natured growl.

"It's the worst I've ever seen," said a man to his companion. "I think it's degenerating, actually."

Liz Furman, 28, a student at the University of Chicago, called the event "Coachella for nerds". She was with a group of 30 people from the university's business school.

"The line is really long," she says. "I hope to enter."

Zheng Li, a 32-year-old Chinese lawyer, felt like he was on Cloud Nine on Saturday.

He arrived at the CHI Center at 3 am to queue to see and hear financial guru Warren Buffett. Li came alone but made other friends in line. He made two trips to Omaha to attend shareholder meetings and said that Omaha was the only US city he visited outside the airports. He was more than happy.

Indeed, he is too excited to sleep a lot.

"I have never seen heaven, but I can imagine a paradise like Omaha," he said. "Warren Buffett, he's like a god. I am very happy to be at the same time and place as God. "

After the work meeting, he plans to follow in Warren Buffett's footsteps, going to the same shopping places as at home and at the same steakhouse where he eats.

"My family thinks I'm crazy," he said. "I could not be in a better place."

Berkshire's followers come from Europe, Asia, and Africa.

But Jan Toussaint had a quicker trip: the 70-year-old retiree who worked in a Kellogg warehouse just jumped out of Bellevue and arrived around 6am.

Toussaint has been attending the annual meeting since about 2004.

"I will appreciate Warren and Charlie and, of course, my friends and I went shopping yesterday," she said.

She bought souvenirs from Berkshire and was helped by See's Candies workers to find her cherished butterscotch nuggets.

"I know what I want," she says. "We'll see what's left today."

On the first day of the shareholders' meeting, the salespeople were amazed by the impressive number of people who took the lead on Shopping Day.

They caught peanut treats at See's Candies, Brooks running shoes, gardening gloves and ties, T-shirts and rubber ducks featuring the faces of the heads. Event poster, Buffett and Munger.

As the day of shopping began at noon at the CHI Health Center, the two men briefly sat in a golf cart in the lobby, attracting a horde of fans and journalists armed with cameras and microphones.

Before the crowd poured in, the two men visited the stands of vendors representing companies belonging to the conglomerate.

After the cart disappeared into an elevator, hours of shopping ensued.

You can see some scenes and scenes in the showroom, as well as live updates on Twitter from World-Herald staff, below:

Apparently in town for the shareholders' meeting, Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, made a surprise visit Friday at the Apple Store of Village Pointe.

Cook stopped at the store for about 20 minutes and spent time meeting staff, taking pictures and shaking hands with customers, according to a store manager, who asked not to be identified.

"It was definitely (cool)," said the director. "We were all taken aback."

Joe Mixan was at the store picking up a refurbished keyboard. He was chatting with a woman close to him about Cook's appearance in a special ABC News show about time spent on the screen.

"The next thing I know, I look over my shoulder and say, 'That's Tim Cook!'," Said Mixan, 53.

Mixan, a retired firefighter who worked at the Apple Retail Point Village until 2010, had his Sony A6000 camera with him. So he started taking pictures of the meeting with Cook. He even had a picture of the store's employees with the CEO.

"It was a cool moment, that's for sure," said Mixan.

Warren Buffett was unexpectedly introduced at the Variant Perspectives conference scheduled for Friday in Omaha to coincide with the annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting.

Buffett said a conference for women investors was long overdue because he does not believe that women invest differently from men.

"The records should open the doors," he said.

At the Fruit of the Loom supermarket, shoppers were not content to buy underwear and socks: lounge pants, a Woodstock for Capitalists t-shirt, and Berkshire Hathaway silk ties at 65. $ were big sellers for the brand.

Spreadsheets stuck to a bulletin board in the storage area indicated which items had already been sold on Friday at the end of the day. The retailer transported six cargoes of semi-trailers only for the shareholders meeting. And once it's gone, it's gone – the brand will not be replenishing the inventory that sold on Friday.

"The volume of today is extraordinary," said John Shivel, vice president of events and communications for Fruit of the Loom.

He did not have the final sales figures, but Shivel felt it could be one of Berkshire's busiest days for the brand. Anecdotally, it seems that more and more people arrive in Omaha Thursday or earlier in the week to take advantage of the first purchases made on Friday, he said.

Fifty employees phoned and directed customers to the store. Even when the shops closed around 5 pm At closing time, there was always a line of buyers grabbing bull ties and Spalding basketball balls.

But a company representative, who manufactures water filtration and softening systems, said he still had a steady stream of customers throughout the day at their booth.

This included new customers as well as existing customers who already owned EcoWater systems and wanted to know more about the company's latest offerings, said Kiley Bastian, director of e-commerce.

"We have all the staff and are ready to face everyone and answer all their questions about water," she said.

There are other exhibition stands present at the meeting that do not necessarily sell items, including Benjamin Moore painting, FlightSafety International, an aviation training company that has submitted mixed reality simulations to try, BNSF Railway and the Lubrizol Corporation, a chemicals company. .

Marnix Troudes, from the Netherlands, seemed to be cold-blooded with a book as thousands of Berkshire Hathaway fans toured him Friday in the CHI exhibition hall.

It turns out that he was reading more about Buffett and Munger in a book that he had just bought at Berkyville.

Soon, international friends from an investment group joined him, brimming with shoes and other novelties they had just acquired or seen at their first-ever Berkshire annual meeting.

Troudes, 27, said he had just become a shareholder but that he had been learning from Buffett and Munger for years on the Internet and per book. This year, he organized a trip to Omaha and met dozens of investors he knew by podcast.

"Honestly, because Charlie is 95, I want to see him before he passes, and Warren too," said Troudes.

Swiss friend Remo Uherek said: "The timing was right. I want to see them both alive, together. "

And it had to be in person, in Omaha.

"The full experience," said Uherek. "It's like a community. It's like being in a family, all looking for wisdom. "

Cipta Purnama, from Indonesia, said his motivation was simple. He reads "Alice Schroeder's book," The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, "and can relate to the different stages of Buffett's life.

"I want to see the God I have never seen."

Some Berkshire Hathaway companies, including See's Candies and Oriental Trading, said Friday's shopping at their kiosks seemed busier this year than the year before.

"He's always busy," said Michelle Johnson of Oriental Trading. "But our lines have definitely been longer this year."

Among the hot items sold on Friday, she said, were rubber ducks Warren and Charlie, a rubber superhero, Buffett and Charlie's $ 5 desktop calendar, and T-shirts sporting Warren's face.

Jensen DeWees, director of marketing at See, said that sales had been rapid at the supplier who had transported in refrigerated platforms 20,000 pounds of candy until the event of Omaha.

DeWees said Friday shoppers seemed to overtake last year's account the first day.

The peanut treat, which is what Warren and Charlie eat by answering Saturday's shareholders' questions, is still a big seller, she said.

Rows of customers pile up at the cash register for See's candies.

The presentation of confectionery was one of Friday's biggest attractions as shareholders grabbed boxes of nut rolls and butterscotch.

Chef Pampered was another hotspot, as shoppers checked culinary products – from a $ 5 paring knife to a $ 140 stainless steel frying pan.

"We need an olive press," a customer told her partner.

In the Nebraska Furniture Mart area, customers tested the Tempur-Pedic mattresses – do not let your Dilly bar drip on one of these – and a $ 1,700 Traeger rack. Others have tried Bose headphones.

Another popular product is the Wells Lamont work and gardening gloves. People took loads.

Amy Chow, 28, and Sam Yong, 34, are just starting to invest.

At their first shareholders' meeting in Alberta, Canada, residents settled on a 1934 Harley Davidson white motorcycle that was once used to deliver Candies See's Candies in Los Angeles.

Both hope to be able to imbibe the investment council of the Oracle of Omaha. Chow also wanted to attend financial discussions elsewhere in the city.

"We want to build our strategy," said Chow.

"For the record, I'm here for the vanilla-orange bar," Yong joked while eating a Dairy Queen treat.

Tony Liu, from China, found the son of a friend who is studying in the United States and arrived with his band in time to shop for Friday at their first-ever event for Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.

They finally came out of an ephemeral store of Fruit of the Loom, their arms filled with sacks.

"Lots of underwear – with Warren Buffett on them," Liu said, amused.

He and his group of 10 were eager to attend this exhibition, which previously had only been heard by friends. With Buffett and Munger in age, Liu said that they did not want to wait anymore.

"It's really cool," said Liu, browsing the exhibition hall. From what he saw until here from Omaha, he said: "Amazing."

Reese Gul, the student, said, "I have known this event for many years. It's a great opportunity to be here.

Then they headed for the Brooks mannequins running through the air above the crowd.

Shareholder Will Moore, 72, wasted no time on Friday afternoon grabbing a Blizzard Oreo Dairy Queen.

Moore and his wife, Jan, came from Alberta, Canada, on Thursday. Moore had already attended a shareholder meeting in 2008.

"I came for one last chance to see Charlie and Warren," Moore said. "How long will they stay with us?"

He did not expect this meeting to be much different from his 2008 experience.

"I'm not expecting anything new, I just want to hear it again," he said.

Moore has been a shareholder in Berkshire for more than 25 years.

"I thought I could invest in US markets or let Warren do it for me," he said. "It was an easy decision."

And the couple will indulge in some shopping, even with a low exchange rate between Canada and the United States.

Eleven years ago, Moore bought a Panasonic razor at Nebraska Furniture Mart and the battery was finally dimmed.

While Karen Clark, a retired educator in Omaha, was lining up to enter the showroom on Friday, she planned her purchases.

Gardening gloves, the bookworm. But first of all: a Blizzard DQ.

She and her buddy Phyllis Sorensen are still starting their adventure in Berkyville with a treat, and 2019 was no different.

"We repeated how cold we were and we went in and went for ice cream," said Sorensen, chuckling.

Like many of them, the two Berkshire Hathaway shareholders say they are interested in Berkshire's discounted memorabilia and may not attend Saturday's business meeting, perhaps watching them online.

Clark, a former Buffett Prize winner for teachers who retired from Omaha South High, said she was a Buffett fan, of course. But she already had lunch with Buffett in 2001 as part of this great event for teachers. She also brought with her a friend, Phyllis, a former Union Pacific employee, too.

"I have not washed my hand since," said Sorensen.

Berkshire Hathaway shareholders can buy books, cowboy boots … and a new best friend?

Shareholders who visited the exhibitions Friday were greeted by Paisley, Jack and Tonka, three dogs poised to be adopted by the Nebraska Humane Society.

NHS dogs and volunteers hung around the World Book display as shareholders arrived to make their first purchases.

Volunteer Dan Martin said he had brought dogs in recent years and some shareholders went to the NHS shelter to adopt a new pet.

"Do not jump to the water," warned Martin, Tonka, a lab mix, while she was jumping on a pet of a woman dressed in a black sheath dress .