Le Casting...
... so that's that in the hat. Or something. Well they did measure my head. Maybe they'll acquire 1500 extra hats for extra heads. Har.
The trainride down to Lake Constance was wonderfully relaxing, especially when, getting out of Friedrichshafen station, I was greeted not only by my auntie/godmother, but a luvverly pink-blue dusk over the lake. We then proceeded to haunt the shops a bit (as I had a. mislaid my Bondish underwear and b. thought I might get a fancy jacket) and had an amusing encounter with a shop assistant who obviously thought I was Aunt's underage daughter and kept addressing her in formal and me in informal speech or even trying to talk over my head to my considerably-less-tall-than-me auntie. The last time I was asked for ID when buying alcohol was when I was 23 and I was mightily offended even then. Oh well.
The sort-of opposite happened when the young guys I'd been squeezed together with in the queue started addressing me with reverential Sies like I was a dignified elder stateswomen. Er, guys? We've just been squeezed together in a queue for ages, the term "same boat" mean anything to you?
Aineeways, nice and comfy evening at Aunt's and Uncle's, and then Uncle drove me over to Bregenz in the morning. I could have gone by train, but he enjoys driving so much, and well, free ride. And then, at 9:30 a.m., I met the mob.
They had already started half an hour early, 8:30 instead of 9 sharp, and there was a crowd of about two hundred people outside the theatre (accompanied by an equal number of press). Methinks, okay, that's a lot, but I've come prepared, brought a book and stuff to eat in the queue. Only, there was no queue, but a wild throng of people and no discernible movement at the doors whatsoever. Every ten minutes or so, the doors would open to admit three to ten people. It was a bit rainy, and some people were already donning their trés chic clothes, thus started various forms of indignant shuffling towards the sheltered space. I got offered a bit of umbrella by a very friendly Swiss couple.
So far, so good. A bit of a squeeze here and there, fun conversations, finding out where everybody came from (there was an Irish couple who after some time wondered whether they had travelled down all the way from Ireland to stand in the wrong queue and then disappeared), being ogled by local TV cameras and such. But then there was no progress at all, the mob got tighter, and whenever somebody announced something from the doors, you couldn't hear a thing from the back, and by the time you'd asked what had just been said everything was drowned out be reacting shouts from the mob. And the squeezing continued to go to hitherto unknown extremes. While I'd started out feeling comfy with cold feet, the feet soon got well again and I started to sweat. So did most of the people around me. Take three hundred sweating bodies in a very confined space of outdoor but humid air, and there will be stink.
I could go into the had-I-organised-this tirade now, but I think the points are rather obvious (like, acquire a megaphone and some queue railing from a nearby airport). By the time I'd reached the door (not the one I originally made for, but it was a door), I'd seen several people who'd been behind me at first enter the building way before I did (I'm just no good at persistant hip-and-shoulder manoeuvres to plot your position five centimetres ahead in a time frame of thirty minutes), acquired several bruises, been kept upright by the sheer force of three-sided pushing impact, lost and rescued my clothes bag, manhandled some chocolate out of the rucksack without a chance in the world to ever move it back in, led several amusing conversations, impressed people with my Tosca knowledge and the petty TV extra experience of my youth, discovered ways I could position my limbs so as to take up less space than my body should physically occupy, and gone through several attacks of massive despair at the human condition in general. Humans, individually, one at a time, maybe up to five, are alright. They can be talked to, etc. Take a few hundred, form a mob, forget they even own a brain.
Once I got in, everything turned pink elephants, because boy does it feel good when you can suddenly move your own body again, breathe fresh-ish air and not down somebody's neck, access your water bottle, and get an apologetic speech by an organiser who was profoundly sorry they hadn't beeen better prepared, but well, we did come of our own free will.
And then on to dressing up, filling out a form, having a mugshot made with the big number on the back of said form, having your measurements taken, getting rid of the form (no questions asked, woe is me) and out the back of the theatre to the wonderfully quiet, nice and lonely lake promenade. I haven't felt as happy being on my own in a very long time. And then I went and examined the Seebühne, bit by bit, rading all the nice explanatory plaques, matching it up with my mental/computery image and deciding I love it and I want to go there again, be that as a Bond extra or just to watch Tosca.
Ack, 3:30 am now. Austrian train ticket machines are rather substandard. Coffee with Auntie and a really nice Zeppelin cake. Relaxing trainride up to zer parents', a glass o'wine or five, and more later.
Nighties.
ETA: And the press coverage on the net so far? Pretty lame. They're all but one using one text (just google bond bregenz casting). That's what they sent gazillions of reporters out there for? They could have just stayed at home and copypasted indstead of travelling to Bregenz and copypaste. I can be briefly spotted on one of the ORF's videos.
The trainride down to Lake Constance was wonderfully relaxing, especially when, getting out of Friedrichshafen station, I was greeted not only by my auntie/godmother, but a luvverly pink-blue dusk over the lake. We then proceeded to haunt the shops a bit (as I had a. mislaid my Bondish underwear and b. thought I might get a fancy jacket) and had an amusing encounter with a shop assistant who obviously thought I was Aunt's underage daughter and kept addressing her in formal and me in informal speech or even trying to talk over my head to my considerably-less-tall-than-me auntie. The last time I was asked for ID when buying alcohol was when I was 23 and I was mightily offended even then. Oh well.
The sort-of opposite happened when the young guys I'd been squeezed together with in the queue started addressing me with reverential Sies like I was a dignified elder stateswomen. Er, guys? We've just been squeezed together in a queue for ages, the term "same boat" mean anything to you?
Aineeways, nice and comfy evening at Aunt's and Uncle's, and then Uncle drove me over to Bregenz in the morning. I could have gone by train, but he enjoys driving so much, and well, free ride. And then, at 9:30 a.m., I met the mob.
They had already started half an hour early, 8:30 instead of 9 sharp, and there was a crowd of about two hundred people outside the theatre (accompanied by an equal number of press). Methinks, okay, that's a lot, but I've come prepared, brought a book and stuff to eat in the queue. Only, there was no queue, but a wild throng of people and no discernible movement at the doors whatsoever. Every ten minutes or so, the doors would open to admit three to ten people. It was a bit rainy, and some people were already donning their trés chic clothes, thus started various forms of indignant shuffling towards the sheltered space. I got offered a bit of umbrella by a very friendly Swiss couple.
So far, so good. A bit of a squeeze here and there, fun conversations, finding out where everybody came from (there was an Irish couple who after some time wondered whether they had travelled down all the way from Ireland to stand in the wrong queue and then disappeared), being ogled by local TV cameras and such. But then there was no progress at all, the mob got tighter, and whenever somebody announced something from the doors, you couldn't hear a thing from the back, and by the time you'd asked what had just been said everything was drowned out be reacting shouts from the mob. And the squeezing continued to go to hitherto unknown extremes. While I'd started out feeling comfy with cold feet, the feet soon got well again and I started to sweat. So did most of the people around me. Take three hundred sweating bodies in a very confined space of outdoor but humid air, and there will be stink.
I could go into the had-I-organised-this tirade now, but I think the points are rather obvious (like, acquire a megaphone and some queue railing from a nearby airport). By the time I'd reached the door (not the one I originally made for, but it was a door), I'd seen several people who'd been behind me at first enter the building way before I did (I'm just no good at persistant hip-and-shoulder manoeuvres to plot your position five centimetres ahead in a time frame of thirty minutes), acquired several bruises, been kept upright by the sheer force of three-sided pushing impact, lost and rescued my clothes bag, manhandled some chocolate out of the rucksack without a chance in the world to ever move it back in, led several amusing conversations, impressed people with my Tosca knowledge and the petty TV extra experience of my youth, discovered ways I could position my limbs so as to take up less space than my body should physically occupy, and gone through several attacks of massive despair at the human condition in general. Humans, individually, one at a time, maybe up to five, are alright. They can be talked to, etc. Take a few hundred, form a mob, forget they even own a brain.
Once I got in, everything turned pink elephants, because boy does it feel good when you can suddenly move your own body again, breathe fresh-ish air and not down somebody's neck, access your water bottle, and get an apologetic speech by an organiser who was profoundly sorry they hadn't beeen better prepared, but well, we did come of our own free will.
And then on to dressing up, filling out a form, having a mugshot made with the big number on the back of said form, having your measurements taken, getting rid of the form (no questions asked, woe is me) and out the back of the theatre to the wonderfully quiet, nice and lonely lake promenade. I haven't felt as happy being on my own in a very long time. And then I went and examined the Seebühne, bit by bit, rading all the nice explanatory plaques, matching it up with my mental/computery image and deciding I love it and I want to go there again, be that as a Bond extra or just to watch Tosca.
Ack, 3:30 am now. Austrian train ticket machines are rather substandard. Coffee with Auntie and a really nice Zeppelin cake. Relaxing trainride up to zer parents', a glass o'wine or five, and more later.
Nighties.
ETA: And the press coverage on the net so far? Pretty lame. They're all but one using one text (just google bond bregenz casting). That's what they sent gazillions of reporters out there for? They could have just stayed at home and copypasted indstead of travelling to Bregenz and copypaste. I can be briefly spotted on one of the ORF's videos.