Monday, November 3, 2008

Amazing!

No, I'm not talking about the American League pennant race of 1967 or the '69 Mets or even the '08 Phillies.

If you're a fan of the show Lost, you'll know that everything happens for a reason. There was a reason why I needed to go out this afternoon to the post office and apothecary....well, first and foremost, it was because I had to mail a letter and then pick up some medicine.

BUT there was another reason. As I peddled my bike back from the my errands, a white car full of people crossed the small intersection in front of me. I noticed right away from the stop-start-stop motion of the car that they were lost. I also noticed that the front passenger was carrying a HUGE television camera.

The driver pulled down the window and asked a young Austrian man for directions. I recognized right away that the driver spoke American English, so being the helpful American I am, I pulled around the front of the car to see if I could help. The Austrian man was fishing for his English vocabulary. Both the front and rear driver's side windows were down. A young man was driving, what I guess was his wife or girlfriend was behind him.

"How do you get to Schloss Hellbrunn?" the man asked me. He and the woman were frazzled, amazingly desperate! And they were covered in what looked like an amazing amount blood, guts, and pumpkin rot. But it all looked fake. Plus they had tons of make-up on.

I explained that they needed to turn back onto the major road they had just left, Alpenstraße, and head straight down until they passed underneath and underpass. Then they should take the very next right which would lead them down a wooded country lane.

By the time I had finished my first sentence, out of the car from the front and back passenger seats raced the camera man and the boom (sound) man, and they were both on me. I was good. Amazingly enough, I didn't look into the camera! I put a foot on my peddle to push off and ride away when the boom man caught my eye. He shook his head quickly as if to say, "Don't race off!"

The camera man turned off his camera and the boom man, an American, explained to the Austrian and me that we had to sign a release or this footage couldn't be used.

While we signed the paperwork, the woman in the backseat swore. They were in an amazing rush! The boom man turned to her and said, "Look, I told you. If you ask people questions, we have to do this. If you don't like it, don't ask for help."

"What kind of show is this?" I asked.
"A travel show," he replied.
"What channel?" I asked.
"I'm not sure," he said. Amazing, if that were true!
"What's the show called?" I asked.
Then he (sort of) came clean. He said, "I can only tell you that it's a pretty popular one!"

Off into the car they went. I wave and they raced off.

So this was some sort of race! Amazing, I thought, that I was caught in the middle of it.

I swore myself to secrecy--this was big stuff--I couldn't tell people about this! In two minutes I was home and spilling my guts to Jenny. Then one of my students came over 15 minutes later to pick up some soup, and I was telling her before she even sat down.

After my student left, Jenny suggested we head to Hellbrunn (only 5 minutes from our apartment) to see what we could see. There's a huge playground there and we promised Nikolas he could play there a bit (he said 40 minutes, and we said about 10--hey, it was getting dark!).

When we got to Hellbrunn, I noticed not one, but three cars that looked like the one I'd seen earlier. They each had numbers in the back window. The highest number I saw was 11.

When we tried to enter the castle grounds, we were immediately forced to make a U-Turn by a staff member. "Das Schloss ist zu wegen Dreharbeit." Closed due to filming...hmmm.

Just then, another white car pulled into the parking lot. A different set of people but with camera and boom men. They held each other's hands and headed right past us through a different door than the main entrance. I wanted to tell them that the path they were taking was a Detour, but I figured it wasn't my place.

In fact, a staff member came up to us a short time later and asked us in German if we'd said anything to the couple. "Nein," we answered. Dang, can't we be friendly?

Jenny decided to take Nikolas down that path to see where the couple was headed. I waited in case more white cars appeared in the parking lot. None did, and soon Jenny was back to tell me that she's seen "things." Well, I wanted to see things, too, so off I went along the path. The pathway was heavily wooded so it was even darker. Up ahead I could see huge lights, the kind you see on film sets. But there was a Roadblock between lights and me: a gate and a staff member. I spoke to the staff member for a moment. I asked him if they were filming an advertisement (playing dumb I was) and he spilled his guts. And while he spilled, I looked through the gate and saw "things."

Fast Forward to me catching up with Jenny and Nikolas in the park. We saw bobbing through the trees what looked like a TV camera light. Two women were running together. One was hobbling. The other said, "I'm going ahead a bit," and the other countered with, "OK, go ahead." Off into the park they went, clueless as the day was long.

Satisfied with the afternoon's excitement, we headed home and made a Pit Stop at Rossbräu, a local restaurant. No one recognized me from TV and I didn't tell anyone who I was.