Day 3 and Beyond

I can’t complain. I am being paid to work on a film set over the summer, a behind the scenes look at the making of a kidz movie, German style. I know that TON is sound, DREHEN means the cameras are rolling, PROBE is rehearsal, and the kids have to go though GARTEROBE and MASK before they sit around waiting for a few PROBE before beginning to DREHEN, at which time everyone should be LEISE, BITTE or else you will be shhshed at, perhaps even in English. It’s all interesting but takes a lot of waiting around on my part, waiting for the chance hour when I can drag one or both boys over to a table and sit them down in front of a Biology book. They are so overjoyed. And the fact that the other kid actors don’t have schoolwork to do sometimes kills these two kids. Too bad. I’m not here to watch you twerps work, I’d rather be knitting. Get over here and tell me about photosynthesis. And you ask me, Matt, do you know anything about Chemistry or higher maths or exothermic reactions, or um ANYTHING outside of English? And I say yes, because I read the books the night before and I look up the big words.

My first weekend in Germany had me moving hotels from the dorm in Isolatedville to join the young cast and their caregivers in a large Guest House 2 km outside a small village which itself is 4 km from the closest thing to a commercial village (read: has a train station with service to Munich, and a bank and a grocery store). The best things about this place were their functional international phone service and the lovely setting in the fields of nowhere. I made long, cheap calls to Munich, and in the evening to Canada and to mom and dad. With two days at the hotel alone and two days on the set (14 hour days), I had taught a total of only 2 hours, which stinks and drives a working man crazy, but it allowed me to settle into what I could expect in life both on the set and off. I found my bearings enough to borrow a car, remember how to drive stick, and get the business end of my movie job sorted out at another gorgeous small farm also in the middle of a corn field, complete with wireless internet and chickens running around, cats nursing kittens and a full production studio occupying the barns and stables. When in the middle of nowhere, the movie business finds a way.

I came to enjoy walking out of the hotel in the evening to see the deer grazing in the pen, flowers folded wildly into the front of farm houses, and the kind family that ran the farm and the restaurant/hotel. They would take their own time serving you, so eating became a ritual of listening for the door to creak open in the backroom, which meant someone was home, and then hoping not to hear it creaked closed again without them noticing that you were there in their restaurant with a menu in hand, waiting.

On set, I became accustomed to being inconspicuous and innocuous, moving in the shadows, trying not to get in the way or eating too much food. I did quickly meet some set people eager to speak English to me, camera and sound and costume people wondering what I was doing there, and I answered Teaching even though I was making sandwiches or wandering aimlessly or asking someone if I could help, in any way, please, because I was so bored.

I had a weekend off after 10 days, and I took the first train 2 hours to Munich, having packed the night before in total excitement of getting the hell back to my people and be reunited with all of our old friends loosely scattered all over the world to celebrate our friends’ wedding in the exquisite wine region of Slovenia. Our weekend in Munich was full of bike riding, our shrunken stomachs being stretched by lovely meat and beer and cheese, and memories around every corner, though we avoided going to our old neighborhoods for fear of tears and tight throats. Every day new people would arrive in Munich for the wedding, every night was another dinner with the bride and groom and their family, and every late night was back to the comfort of my friends’ empty house to rest my aching, out-of-shape North American body, sit with their cats, and realize, over and over, how much I loved Munich.

Now, the only reason I was even available to take this tutoring job was because I had a ticket to Munich for this wedding, so I changed my ticket to give me two months of paid work in Germany instead of just the two weeks of money-dropping vacation. So, after this weekend off I worked 1 ½ days on the set to earn some extra cash, and oh was I a restless, grumpy, demanding and ruthless teacher. Then, I giddily hopped onto an evening train to Munich with a beer in my belly and spent one night with cats on my head, the apartment now heavy with friends heading to the wedding, camping out on the floors. Thursday morning, as the rain poured and the fine couture carefully packed, I plopped behind the wheel of a rented VW Golf, directions in hand, and sped on the rainy autobahn past Salzburg through the mountains of Austria and into the winding unknown roads meandering through sparse and beautiful flat villages into Slovenia. 

Destination: Jeruzalem.