for those of you who do not know,
wetten dass...? is probably the most well-known show in german speaking europe, hosted by the famous thomas gottschalk.
it's a show where ordinary people attempt out of the ordinary bets, in order to compete for their 15 minutes of fame and a few thousand euros. there is always a couch full of celebrities (paris hilton, shakira, robbie williams, catherine zeta-jones, and some famous german people) who get to decide whether they think the contestant can pull off the bet or not. in between bets, there are performances and thomas gottschalk chats with the celebs. it has become a phenomenon over here.
wetten dass broadcasts live, once a month, from cities around germany. each month is a new city and last night's broadcast was from....you guessed it...mannheim.
so a friend of mine and myself decided we wanted to go and see the show - whose guests included: madonna, green day, shakira, santana, cameron diaz, toni collette, anna netrebko and rolando villazon. we did not actually have tickets, which are distributed through a lottery system whereby one sends in a postcard and if it is randomly selected, then you are eligible to purchase up to 4 tickets. so we went to try and buy some off of a money-hungry ticket-lottery winner - but that ended up not really working in our favour. we thought tickets would be about 40-50 euros, but when we got to the door, we realized that a)there was no one selling tickets, only a bunch of people looking to buy tickets and b)these people were willing to spend 250 euros and upwards per ticket. so that idea sort of died very quickly.
but each show has another way for residents to get involved - each month thomas gottschalk puts a bet on the city that they have to pull of by the end of the show. so we decided to venture down to mannheim's water tower, where the city was going to be broadcast live. we got there and the radio station had set up, there was a large screen, sausages and alot of beer. and of course, a bunch of people. why am i telling you this, you may ask. just keep reading.
so the show begins...and everything is fine, except for the 1/2 second delay on the screen - so we can hear what is going on before we can see it. wetten dass cuts to the water tower, everyone screams, i was a little tiny dot on TV, and then mannheim learns what its bet is. our bet was to get 250 guitarists to the water town and for them all to simultaneously play the famous chords from 'smoke on the water'.
then...sound cuts and we are back to radio music. but the screen still has the show on, just no sound...are you confused? does this make any sense? no, it doesn't. so there were were - cold, hungry and fed up. had dragged ourselves out to watch the show live from the water tower - where the bet was going to take place, and they weren't even going to give us audio? so we left. went home. watched the show from the comfort of a couch, and laughed at the people who payed 250 euros or were still standing by the water tower waiting for the sound to come back on. overall, an event-filled evening.
and the moral of the story is: the german's do not do it better.
