German Comic Con Dortmund 2016 with David Hasselhoff

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Friday - Day 1 (2nd December 2016)

From 2nd - 4th December 2016, the 3rd German Comic Con took place in Dortmund.
After being in contact with the organizers for GCC Berlin, they asked me, if I'd like to come to Dortmund as well, when David Hasselhoff would be there, too. Since I'd like to have a photo with him and my K.I.T.T., I accepted (I was not at "ZDF Fernsehgarten" myself and at "Celebrate the 80's & 90's" it has not been my own K.I.T.T.).
My "adventure" GCC Dortmund started on 2nd December at 3:00 AM, when my alarm clock started ringing. At 4:00 AM, I departed from Erfurt and arrived about 07:30 AM at a car wash in Dortmund. When I arrived at the Westfalenhallen at 08:00 AM, most other exhibitors were already finished with their assembling. They left a gap for K.I.T.T., which now was filled.
For the next 3 hours, I cleaned the car, connected it to external power supply and tried to find the best camera position together with the photographer for the photo shootings with David Hasselhoff on Saturday and Sunday. Additionally, they built a white wall around the car for a better looking background.

I met Olli Wirtz again, who brought his Back To The Future DeLorean time machine and his Batman Tumbler again. There were many other familiar faces as well.
At 11:00 AM the first visitors entered the place (VIP ticket holders) for all others, the doors opened at 12:00. The first star guests sat at their signing tables and at 12:45 my first planned photo shooting with Danny Glover from "Lethal Weapon" took place. Since I got my photos for free as a reward for bringing K.I.T.T., I also took a photo with Daniel Portman from "Game of Thrones", although I've never seen the show. But you got what you got ;)
That was also the case for Jodi Lyn O'Keefe ("Prison Break", "Vampire Diaries", "Nash Bridges") and Stefan Kapicic ("Colossus" from "Deadpool"), who I also did not really know until then. At Stefan's shooting the photographer told him about my car, so I took Stefan with me to show him, since it was on his way back to the signing table anyway.
Stefan, who was born in 1978 (just as myself), did also watch "Knight Rider" of course and really enjoyed taking a seat in my replica. He also posed for photos and recorded a short video message for me. A really nice guy. I definately will have to watch "Deadpool" soon. It's already on my list for quite a long time ;)

The photo shooting with Pamela Anderson had to be moved from 01:00 PM to 02:30 PM, because her plane was late, but she finally arrived. She gave hand to everyone and posed with a lascivious face impression for photos! I did not expect her to be such a nice person. Michael Madsen ("Reservoir Dogs", "Kill Bill", "Sin City") on the other hand was cancelled for the Friday. But he should be there on Saturday morning.
About 03:00 PM, my friends Pepper and Drebin from our Project-KITT club arrived. I got exhibitor wrist bands for them, so they could support me with K.I.T.T. a little bit. We visited the halls to find an overview. The GCC Dortmund (6 halls) was much bigger than Berlin (2 halls), so it took some time to find everything.
In hall 4, we met the "Avengers live" - professional cosplayers in the roles of the Marvel heroes, which I had already met in Berlin before. Unfortunately, we did not take a photo with them and K.I.T.T. there, so we arranged to do so in Dortmund. So we took the occasion now. Afterwards they went to the Tumbler from "The Dark Knight" to pose for pictures.

The rest of the day just zoomed past. Since Friday was not that crowded, some of the stars had some spare time sitting at their tables later. At 5:20 PM, I took the occasion to ask Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, to say "hello" to K.I.T.T., if she wanted. She stood up and followed me to the car to take some photos. She also used to watch "Knight Rider", but was not really a fan of the German voice of my car :) Nonetheless, she's a very nice person. Always smiling. Simply a great guest!
At the evening, my K.I.T.T. was on TV! The WDR show "Lokalzeit" showed him standing at the con.

Saturday - Day 2 (3rd December 2016)

On Saturday (3rd December 2016), I went to the Westfalenhalle at 08:00 AM alone. Pepper and Drebin wanted to come by later. The doors officially opened at 09:00 AM (VIP ticket holders) or 10:00 AM (all others). Today more star guests were announced. First of all Ron Perlman ("Hellboy", "Drive", "The Name of the Rose") and of course David Hasselhoff, who was expected to take photos with my K.I.T.T. and fans at 04:15 PM - after single shootings and a talk panel.
I visited Olli at his DeLorean and Tumbler replica and also met some people from the BTTF and Knight Rider fandom. Today, they had sold 21,000 entry tickets, so it was much more crowded than on Friday (4,000 tickets). There also were a lot of people taking photos of K.I.T.T. - and he talked to them, so this was a nice attraction.

Because of the fact, that the con earned a lot of money by selling photo tickets with David Hasselhoff and my car, I was allowed to take photos with much more guests than in Berlin, where they did not really make money with my car. Since they were not able to give me autograph vouchers for the Special Guests (Hasselhoff, Perlman und Anderson), I decided to take photos with almost ALL guests instead, even if I did not know all of them. This could change some day, and then I already got their picture ;)
So I took photos with Alice Krige (Borg Queen from "Star Trek"), Andrew Lee Potts & Hannah Spearritt ("Primeval", Hannah also used to be a member of "S Club 7"), Clive Standen ("Vikings"), Michael Madsen ("Reservoir Dogs", "Kill Bill", "Sin City"), again with Pamela Anderson and of course David Hasselhoff and Ron Perlman ("Hellboy", "Drive", "The Name of the Rose"). Originally, they also offered a "Baywatch" double shoot with Pamela and David, but this had to be cancelled, because they did not want to take pictures together. Too bad, but you can't change it. The single shooting with Hasselhoff was filmed by several TV cameras. I was visible later in some reports from RTL, VOX and ARD together with David.
At 02:00 PM, I went to the panel stage. At 02:30 PM David Hasselhoff's talk panel was planned. I went earlier to find a good seat, but since I got a VIP pass for the panels from the organizers, I was allowed to sit in the closed area right in front of the stage. That was a perfect seat for the "Primeval" panel with Hannah Spearritt and Andrew Lee Potts.

At David Hasselhoff's panel, my seat was not that good, because David spent most of the time at a bridge in front of the stage, so I actually was "behind" him most of the time. But his fiancée Hayley sat right in front of me.
David was in a good mood, started to sing the refrain of "Looking for Freedom" and acted like a solo entertainer most of the time. Only 3 fans were able to ask questions at the end of the panel talk.

Right after the panel talk, I went to K.I.T.T., to prepare everything for the upcoming photo shooting with David Hasselhoff. I removed the license plate, because the car looks much better this way and also removed the yellow lines on the floor which was good to keep people away from the car the whole day. But they should not appear on the expensive photos, which cost fans 80 Euros! Everything should be perfect - at least from my point of view.
At 04:15 PM, David Hasselhoff appeared and I was allowed to take my photo as the very first person. Also Pepper and Drebin got their picture. After that, there were about 200 fans in the line, who also wanted to get their photo. Unfortunately, the shooting ended up quite chaotic. First they abstained from the flash, because it was mirrored by the car and people came out too bright. Then, some of the pics were out of focus, because the camera focused on the car, so the faces were blurred. Then the printers quit their job, so about 20 people were photographed, but did not receive their pictures. At this point they made a break.
I took the occassion to ask David about some autographs. First, he signed my passenger's door. I already got his autograph on my trunk cover before, but I also wanted to have it at a visible part of the car - but still kind of hidden. Additionally I got his autograph at a friend's gullwing steering wheel. Then David had to talk to one of the responsible persons about the ongoing of the photo shooting. Because they didn't have a solution yet, he decided to leave to give some more autographs at his table.
Because the quality of some of the pics was really bad, they now decided to let David sit in the car and take a picture with the dashboard. Should this look good? I didn't think so...
David's opinion was the same, when he came back. He wanted to see the whole car on the pictures. So they continued to take the photos from the front. Some of them were out of focus again. Many fans got a second chance. But they did not turn out as perfect as they should have been. Too bad..
Finally, the shooting went until 06:30 PM - 90 minutes more than originally planned. Way to go for Sunday...
The photoshooting was filmed by German TV Pro Sieben for "taff" and "Sat.1 Frühstücksfernsehen".

Sunday - Day 3 (4th December 2016)

On Sunday I also went there at 08:00 AM. Pepper and Drebin were not there today. But again, they expected about 19,000 visitors to come. I started by taking another photo of the BTTF DeLorean time machine, whose owner Josef was expected to arrive today. Josef and Olli had prepared the car for another part of the movie each day. On Friday it looked like BTTF I, on Saturday it looked like BTTF II (with wheels turned down) and today it looked like BTTF III (white sidewall tires, box on the hood). They allowed everyone to take a seat in the car, so I also took my chance...
After that, I went to David Hasselhoff's signing table to get some more autographs. He signed a friend's leather jacket and Josef's DVD box. And I also got a signed picture of Michael Knight for my wife and myself. David also waved hello for my wife through my mobile phone camera.

Originally, I had planned to visit several talk panels - like I did in Berlin. But I changed my mind to take photos with the rest of the guests instead, so I almost got all of them in the end.
So I took photos with Greyston Holt ("Bitten"), Danny Glover (he sat on a chair on Friday, so I took another chance to get a photo with him standing next to me), Pamela Anderson (you never can take too many photos with her) and David Hasselhoff (whose colorful "Kung Fury" jacket I did not like as much as the blue jacket he wore today).

Fun-Fact: David's shooting was planned to start at 12:35, but all photo schedules already had a 30-minute delay, so Pamela had not finished her shooting, when he arrived. He took a second to think about it and then entered her shooting to give her a long hug. At least, she did not resist ;) There still was no "Baywatch" double shooting. I don't know, if there are any photos of that. I've only seen it with my own eyes ;)
I didn't go to the panel of David Hasselhoff today. Instead, I took photos with Gareth David-Lloyd ("Torchwood"), Trevor Butterfield ("Star Wars"), Anna Walton ("Hellboy 2") as well as Anna Walton & Ron Perlman at the "Hellboy 2" double shoot. I only missed Ryan Hurst ("Sons of Anarchy"), because I had to prepare K.I.T.T. for the second photo shooting with David Hasselhoff.

The team seemed to be better prepared this time. At least, they arrived earlier. Also David's security helped to build a "wall" around the stage to keep people away from taking a look. But this lead to have even less light to get through, so most of the photos turned out kind of too dark. Most of the fans did not seem to care. At least: You don't get a chance to take a photo with David and K.I.T.T. every day...
After the photoshooting, the German Comic Con in Dortmund was over. According to the organizers, they had 45,000 visitors this time. A new record!
There were also some reports on German TV:
- WDR "Lokalzeit" reported on Friday evening. They also showed K.I.T.T. at the end of their report.
- RTL "Exclusiv Weekend" reported on Sunday about the dispute between David and Pamela - I could have been seen at the photo shooting with Hasselhoff (in split-screen)
- "Prominent" on VOX did a rerun of that report on Sunday evening
- RTL "Punkt 12" and "Exclusiv" also reported about the same topic on Monday. This time, I was visible in full screen at the photo shooting with David Hasselhoff.
- RTL West and RTL Nord aired a similar report, but focused more on some fans. Here, I only dashed through one shot.
- Pro Sieben reported in "taff" on Monday. They also interviewed fans after their photo shooting with Hasselhoff and my car.
- The same report was shown on Tuesday's Sat.1 Frühstücksfernsehen.
- ARD "Brisant" also reported and showed me for about half a second at the photo shooting with David Hasselhoff.
- ZDF "Volle Kanne" reported from the con, but was obviously totally flashed, so they claimed, that K.I.T.T. was not there ;)
Personally, I enjoyed the weekend very much. I met a lot of nice people (though I did not have the time for longer conversation with everyone) and of course I got a lot of good experiences. In the end, I still was very lucky to have another day off work on Monday to finally get some sleep ;)

Previously on 2016-10-15/16:
German Comic Con Berlin 2016

Next on 2017-09-30/10-01:
German Comic Con Berlin 2017

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