Brush with fame
Compared to places like LA or New York or even DC, Basel isn't a place where you encounter many celebrities. Or maybe you do (Roger Federer, after all, is from around here) and you just don't realise it because you don't know who the real Swiss celebrities actually are. But anyway, today I think I came about as close as I ever will to real celebrity here.
In the lounge in Frankfurt on the way back from Beijing, I noticed a bunch of tennis players hanging out (the big bags of tennis racquets gave it away). I didn't think much of it until I noticed that the same group was boarding the bus to the plane. I was trying to figure out why a bunch of tennis players would be flying to Basel when I noticed several of them chatting up an American near me who looked familiar...since I used to follow tennis, I realised it was Brad Gilbert (former player, current coach), who was there with the guy he's now coaching. And based on their conversations, I figured out that the players were all from Argentina. Well, it finally occurred to me that it must be time for the big Swiss Indoors tournament. As it turns out, some of these guys are actually in the top 25 in the world (including the two who sat in front of me, at least one of whom I'm convinced is the one that had stanky gas, which is no fun in the confined and stale air on a plane, let me tell you). OK, so as brushes with fame go, that's admittedly pretty lame, but by Basel standards I thought it wasn't half bad.
(The one observation I would make is that whenever I've seen or met athletes in the past, they've always been much bigger in person than they appeared from a distance--one time I saw a couple of the smallest guys on the Duke basketball team at a local restaurant and they absolutely towered over everyone in the place. These guys? Not so much. Most of them were more like my size, only skinnier and obviously in much better shape. Oh, and the other thing--I guess that makes two observations, not one--is that they looked like your average schlumpy/scruffy twentysomethings--really, if they weren't carrying tennis racquets you wouldn't have had the slightest clue who they were. It was a complete bling-free zone.)
In the lounge in Frankfurt on the way back from Beijing, I noticed a bunch of tennis players hanging out (the big bags of tennis racquets gave it away). I didn't think much of it until I noticed that the same group was boarding the bus to the plane. I was trying to figure out why a bunch of tennis players would be flying to Basel when I noticed several of them chatting up an American near me who looked familiar...since I used to follow tennis, I realised it was Brad Gilbert (former player, current coach), who was there with the guy he's now coaching. And based on their conversations, I figured out that the players were all from Argentina. Well, it finally occurred to me that it must be time for the big Swiss Indoors tournament. As it turns out, some of these guys are actually in the top 25 in the world (including the two who sat in front of me, at least one of whom I'm convinced is the one that had stanky gas, which is no fun in the confined and stale air on a plane, let me tell you). OK, so as brushes with fame go, that's admittedly pretty lame, but by Basel standards I thought it wasn't half bad.
(The one observation I would make is that whenever I've seen or met athletes in the past, they've always been much bigger in person than they appeared from a distance--one time I saw a couple of the smallest guys on the Duke basketball team at a local restaurant and they absolutely towered over everyone in the place. These guys? Not so much. Most of them were more like my size, only skinnier and obviously in much better shape. Oh, and the other thing--I guess that makes two observations, not one--is that they looked like your average schlumpy/scruffy twentysomethings--really, if they weren't carrying tennis racquets you wouldn't have had the slightest clue who they were. It was a complete bling-free zone.)
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