The annual pilgrimage to IBC is upon us. After the first day we all seem to suffer from “trade-show feet”, followed by trade-show exhaustion as each day goes by. But we all seem to love it. Is the IBC digital TV’s answer to Lourdes? “Whoah” I hear you shout, “take it easy there!”
Well at one IBC, some years ago, I did have a divine intervention. Let me explain.
Arriving at Schiphol on EasyJet from Geneva, a group of colleagues and I crammed ourselves into a taxi-van and headed into town. I sat in the front seat with a lap-top, a spare STB for the stand, an associated bag of cables and all the other paraphernalia that accompanies an IBC veteran. I did feel overburdened and not in control of my personal situation, which may have added to the predicament I found myself in some time later. We arrived in what was an awkward location opposite the hotel, needing tram tracks and road negotiation. I stayed behind to pay the taxi driver then struggled with bags and belongings to the hotel check-in, as had my colleagues.
When I eventually got to the desk the clerk asked me for my passport. I went to my left inner breast pocket. I then searched my other pockets; I searched my whole being. STRESS! I had last used it at Schiphol. Where was it now? I retraced my steps outside and called the cab company, but it was nowhere to be found. What a horrible feeling it is when you have lost that precious document. The hotel, sympathetic to my cause, gave me my room, whereupon I systematically went through every nook and cranny of my belongings, however it was indeed gone.
Later that same night the reception pointed me to a police station just down the street. I made my report at around midnight. Not relishing a trip to the British Consul or Embassy the next day my night was very, very stressful. I re-played all the scenarios from passing passport control to the hotel, trying to imagine what had happened to that ‘oh-so-precious’ burgundy covered book.
The next morning at precisely 8am the reception called me telling me that they had received a call from the police. My passport had been located that morning at 5am. Tired from lack of sleep, but very elated, I made my way to the station in question. It was situated in the red-light district just along the street from the three-story Grasshopper Coffee Shop that sits off the Damrak and quite some distance from my hotel.
My passport was found in a trashcan in the red-light district by an Amsterdam police foot-patrol. The eagle-eyed officer had apparently recognised it by its colour. Strangely, it had the page next to the picture torn in half.
Someone had obviously picked it up where I had dropped it by the taxi and wandered the streets with it. Not before using page 30 to make a filter for a joint, so the policemen surmised. I was able to fly home at the end of the show, but was it through divine intervention or perhaps just pure luck?
