Smile! You're on...well, we can't tell you that.

(Sept. 3: Sorry for the delay in posting this, which I actually wrote last week, but I ran out of coins and time at the Internet cafe!)

I am in Berlin for the week, allegedly to cover a consumer electronics convention. But there isn't much to cover until the actual consumers arrive tomorrow, so today I am just seeing the sights. When the flocks of tourists and pigeons (sometimes I don't see a huge difference, to be honest) started to get annoying, I sought respite in a quiet-looking cafe.


From the moment I walked in, I had the sense that there was something strange going on. Everyone seemed to know something I didn't. People sat at a few of the tables with coffees in front of them, but no one was taking a sip. The man at the table across from me was wearing headphones and had a heavy box of audio recording equipment slung around his neck. He was ostensibly reading the newspaper, but his eyes were directed over the top of the page, toward the front door.


A woman sat alone at another table, smiling and waiting. She seemed to be looking a lot at a white box in front of her, beside the front door. A chalkboard with the list of specials covered one side, and what looked like a television screen faced her. But I could see some dim motion and shape in the screen -- a hand pressing against it, a murky face? It reminded me of a magic 8 ball, with something mysterious bobbing around beneath the opaque surface.


The two guys in the corner seemed nervous and out of place, too. They were smoking and talking, but keep getting up and down from their chairs. A staircase made to look like flames covered the wall across from me, and behind the orange frosted glass I could make out the face of a waitress, crouched and curious, peering something I couldn't see. When she noticed me watching her, she scurried away. I ordered eggs and coffee and decided to stay put and see how this scene played out.


Suddenly, one of the guys jerked to attention and ran to the front door. He made an almost imperceptible gesture toward the white box and returned to his seat. A moment later, a middle-aged man entered the cafe, sat down with the woman, and . The audio guy began buttons and fiddling with a pole that I realized was an extendable microphone. After a minute or two, the woman ran out of the cafe. The man looked down at something in his hands, then back at the door, obviously befuddled. When he got up to run after her, the audio guy dropped his newspaper and followed, no longer attempting to hide his equipment. A cameraman popped out of the white box.

Wow, I thought, is this a taping for a television show? A journalistic expose? An elaborate joke?


Well, yes to all three, in a way. I hung around and asked some questions, since that is what journalists do, after all. I discovered that this was a taping for a pilot TV program along the lines of the American show "Candid Camera," but with a public-service spin. They wouldn't tell me the name of it or the network it would air on, since it isn't officially sold yet, but they explained the premise.

"It is about hustlers, or -- what do you call it? Scams?" the audio guy explained to me. In this particular episode, the unsuspecting victim had purchased a laptop on eBay, and the seller said she would need to deliver it in person. So they arranged to meet at a cafe, and the woman showed him a real laptop, then distracted him with friendly conversation (it didn't hurt that she was pretty, I bet) and switched the real thing with a wooden laptop.

"This is a common problem," one of the producers told me with a straight face.

Hmm. I'd kind of like to see this show. Maybe next they will trick someone into buying a wooden car? That would require a very, very pretty woman indeed.