Shooting St. Andrew's Links

Day 1 – Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Friday began with a 6am wake up to catch a train to Cologne. From Cologne we would catch a flight to Edinburgh. From Edinburgh we would rent a car and drive through the Scottish countryside to reach St. Andrews.

We were actually using planes, trains, and automobiles. 

The purpose of this trip was to shoot footage for an Allianz film. Friday was a travel day, Saturday was for filming, and Sunday was a little bit of filming before our noon-time flight back to Germany. There was no time for lolly-gagging – this was work. 

They say you get four seasons in one day in Scotland. The locals repeat it like a mantra. If its true every one of their seasons is bloody cold. The other seasons? Windy, cloudy, and rainy.

We went up and down fairways and into bunkers on the Old Course looking for the exact scenery we needed. The course was open for a normal day of golf so we were dodging play balls while we were looking around. No injuries, so we never had to find out if a German film crew is in play.

When we were finished, we punched the address for our bed and breakfast into the GPS – no rooms available in town.  We followed the directions, going from a main road to a side road to a dirt road, until we arrive at a horse farm. The GPS was either unreliable or our B&B was very remote. 

Stuck in the middle of nowhere in Scotland, we called the B&B. This did not help because I didn't know where we were and that's a good starting point for getting directions. 

Google had the right answer in the end. We arrived at our countryside, wifi-free B&B, which was run by a kind mother and a son. 

The director, sipping the host's homemade beer, thought it felt like a really fun sitcom. The producer squinted suspiciously around at the farms that surrounded the house and said it was more like a horror movie.

Scouting for spots as golfers play through.

Day 2 – Shooting the Course, Drinking Irn Bru, and Remaining Conscious

Today is the day I also discovered Irn Bru (pronounced Iron Brew). A fluorescent orange energy drink that got me through a day that started at 5am.

It was already bright out when I awoke to begin the shooting day. But the brightness didn't bother me as much as the cold did. 

It being June, I didn't think I would need any wool sweaters. Amateur move, Bellamy! Not only was it as cold as balls on the coast, it was windy as well. I had several layers underneath a windproof jacket, none of those were a match of the fierce Scottish weather. I learned the hard way why all those Scots wear wool sweaters.

And those clouds! The sky was a uniform, thick-as-pea-soup grey, which maintained its gloom all day. Oh, and there were bleachers and TV camera towers littered all over the Old Course for the British Open, preventing the clear landscape beauty shots that we required.

But! We progressed and persevered in the face of wind, rain, sleet, and British Open infrastructure. We got our shots and I got the chance to chip one out of Hell bunker. It's famous, but it also reminded me that golf can be an easy way to get angry.

Plus, despite the rain, our film crew managed to unpack its drone and buzz it around for a few shots of the Old Course, which was closed for maintenance that day. It's a loud contraption with eight propellers and a moveable camera. 

I thought it was pretty cool, while all the St. Andrews' employees were unfazed as they worked away on the course. When you've seen one flying spider robot, you've seen them all, I guess.

The German film crew sneaks up on the unsuspecting groundskeepers.

Making sand castles in one of St. Andrews Links' infamous Bunkers.

A flying spider robot has been sighted over St. Andrews.

Day 3 – Scotch Tasting on the Run 

Sunday. A day of rest for some people in some parts. Not for us. 

We came to the 18th hole at the Old Course bright and early at 6am to get some rare St. Andrew's footage with no people in it. But we got it, just as the first tourists were approaching to get their photos with a stone bridge.

Oh, and we managed to get a homemade Scottish breakfast at the B&B in the process – something we missed out on the day before.

Then! Everything was hauled into the rental vehicles and we automobiled to Edinburgh to catch our plane to Cologne where a train waited to return us to the Dorf. But! Before we boarded our plane, we managed to sneak in some scotch samples at the Duty Free, chased with Irn Bru.

See you again Scotland, hopefully in a non-work-related manner.

One Weekend, Two Port Cities – Port 2

I was sent to Hamburg for work and, due to labour strife and confusion with my Hamburger friends, I couldn’t stay for the weekend. Instead I returned to the Dorf and boarded another bus to a second port city. In this the second port of two blog posts, I write and ramble about our trip to Antwerp.

Our Lady of Antwerp

Antwerp

What pops into your head when you think of Belgium? Beer. Okay, that was easy. But what else? Waffles? Fries? Jean-Claude Van Damme?

Sadly, fries and waffles do not require a secret recipe or a local ingredient. Van Damme is, well, that's a blog post on its own. Is Belgium really that blah? Is it really just about starchy foods and washed out action dudes living off the irony of their washed-ness?

No. Belgium has Antwerp. You know, that city where diamonds come from. Amsterdam's less well known little brother. The biggest city in Flanders, you know? "Flanders Fields, where the poppies grow..." That one? The place where they don't speak French and they don't quite speak Dutch either.  

You can be forgiven for not knowing much about Antwerp, I didn't until a colleague mentioned what a cool place it was. Antwerp? "Yeah, it's a cool town. Better than Brussels. Don't go there. Brussels is a hole."

With a long weekend approaching and no couch to crash on in Hamburg after the ADC, we decided to get onto a bus to see what all the fuss is about in Antwerp. And give Brussels a wide berth in the process.

An unexpected surprise

If you wanted to be anywhere in Medieval Europe (if you don't mind lack of hygiene and a high risk of disease, dismemberment, and/or death) Antwerp was the place to be. It was an international port, filled with merchants and artists and thinkers and beer. Its fortune was built on wool, and, to this day, it's still a cool fashion and design city. 

It was also a hub of religious violence. It was sacked by the Spanish during the Eighty Years War. There were street fights and looting during the Reformation. It had a 'Great Fire' and was blocked from the sea (the city's livelihood) for centuries, then showered with V2 missiles during the troubles in the 40s.

They didn't give up on it. They always moved back. They rebuilt what was destroyed. They maintained what wasn't destroyed. They brewed beer. They kept on going, and today Antwerp surprised me – it's a fun, cool city with a great vibe.

The old town, like the old town in most Western European cities is touristy, but a 10-minute walk in any direction (except towards the river) takes you to a cool neighbourhood. It might be a student hood or the hipster corner of town where streets are lined with antique shops filled with knick knacks. On our first day we even chanced upon a food truck market. 

Culture, Motherf**kers!

I mentioned artists earlier. Some of my favourites put brush to canvas around here: Bruegel, Bosch, those guys. Needless to say, I didn't need a few beers to get excited about checking out the Fine Arts Museum. That excitement evaporated when I learned it's closed for renovations until 2018! 

Rather than sticking the collection into a basement somewhere until 2018, the museum has spread its masterpieces around. There was a Bruegel Land somewhere in the countryside, which I hope didn't look like this:

So, instead of anger-drinking beer on patios and binge-eating fries out of sadness, we managed to see some of the great altar paintings. They were put on display in Antwerp's cathedral, so for an easy six euros we saw a beautiful gothic church and some Flemish masters.

Beer your beery beers, beers.

I might have been a little too hard on Belgium earlier on. They make good beer. And a lot of it. They also age the stuff. They stick bottles into basements and forget about them for a few decades. At one place, Kata ordered a fruit beer that was almost as old as her. They have delicious darks and awesome ales. Most of the wheat beers are palatable enough that you don't need to stick tropical fruit into them.

We were also lucky. We visited on one of those rare weekends in northwestern Europe where it was sunny. Naturally with weather that good in a beer country, we hit the patios. Who has ever told you they got a tan in Flanders? I can! But that was two weeks ago, so it's gone now.

Many of us have a bucket list of places we'd like to visit. Antwerp never rated as a place on my list, but it has earned a spot on my list of places worthy of a second visit.

Kata's fruit beer from 1987. It tasted as bad as that sounds.

Going to the Toilet Disco, complete with a DJ.

Artsy Antwerp and its street art.

A photo of the photo taker.

So long, Antwerp. See you again soon!

If you go:

Drink beer and eat Flemish food at Bille's Beer Kafeteria. There are plenty of great beers, which can be a little overwhelming. But overwhelming is good, because you just ask the staff for advice, they are nice, attentive and all-knowing about the Belgian beers. The bar's mascot is a French Bulldog, who is not as nearly as nice and attentive as the staff unless you're sharing your Flemish rabbit stew.

One Weekend, Two Port Cities – Port 1

I was sent to Hamburg for work and, due to labour strife and confusion with my Hamburger friends, I couldn’t stay for the weekend. Instead I returned to the Dorf and boarded another bus to a second port city. In this the first of two blog posts, I write and ramble about Hamburg, the first port.

The Ad Party in the Fish Market with
a really big Disco Ball

Hamburg

Hamburg and I have never had the luck to get to know each other. The first time I was there was for four or five hours. Enough time for a job interview and a few quick beers with a friend at a bar near the train station before hopping onto express back to Berlin. Oh, it was rainy and grey the whole time too.

This recent, second trip was less brief, but there wasn't enough time for everything other than the trip's intended purpose.

Ad Party!!!!!!!!

Hamburg was the venue for this year’s Art Directors' Club of Germany's annual awards, so my agency sent a contingent of its ad folk, including me, from the Dorf to Hamburg to take part in the event.

The event includes an exhibition of the winners and a pretty big after party. Everyone was excited about the after party, while the exhibition was an afterthought. Me? I am an non-German-speaking ad nerd, so I was excited about the work and was nervous about the party.

But the trip was not so easy. A rail strike (it's Europe, it happens often) forced the agency to rent a bus. The rail strike also made it impossible to stick around in the city for the weekend to visit Hamburger friends, which I had planned.

Upon arrival and after a quick traditional lunch, which for a producer and I meant eating a pink mess of mashed potatoes and pork with two sunny-side-up eggs on top, we hit the exhibition.

Mixed reactions to Labskaus, a traditional Hamburger dish
of mashed potatoes and meat with eggs on top.

How do I describe German advertising? I can't. It's a nation of 80 million people, not counting Austria and Switzerland, and without a command of the German language, my generalizations would barely generalize properly.

But they're working hard over here. The design is fantastic and, even in our little global village, it feels distinctively German in some strange, indescribable way. They're also into visual ideas, which cheered me up when I went through the ad poster category with my limited command of German.

Just because I said I was excited about the exhibit, doesn't mean I was also a little excited about the ad party. It did not disappoint. They threw the party in the Fish Market building, with free drinks and a gigantic disco ball. 

I went to bed at 3am, which was late for me but early for many of my colleagues – some of whom lasted until 8am. I am only 32 years old, but I guess that is truly old in advertising years.

Hamburger Friends

In the months leading up to, and right after, the shuttering of my old ad agency in Budapest, colleagues were blown to the wind. Some returned home, some drifted to other places, and others found work in Hamburg.

Usually a free ride to a strange right before the weekend would mean that I would stick around for a said weekend. But with the rail strike, some Hamburger friends moving apartments, and other Hamburger friends flying away for the weekend, it didn't seem like a possibility.

Instead, we met for a great, but quick, catch-up lunch. The agency's bus had a departure time for 1pm. At 12:55, still partway through the lunch, I received frantic instant messages asking where I was. It turns out a 1pm departure time means arriving before 1pm – what an amateur move by the Canadian.

Once again a visit to Hamburg and Hamburger friends is cut short. There's always the third time, though.

An ad for a newspaper. "In Berlin it could be a bum or a CEO."

In the illustration category...

I've posted this before, but some of my
favourite work was the student work.