WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:24.220 When I went to Austria to speak to the students in 2005, I didn't actually fly to Austria, I flew to the next country, Switzerland, landed in Basel, drove all night, 500 miles into Vienna, and got to Vienna at 9 o'clock in the morning in a Swiss rental car, and telephoned the students, not easily, from a telephone, a payphone in Vienna, because every phone had been wrecked by immigrants, and I phoned the students, spoke to the student who had invited me. 00:00:24.220 --> 00:00:31.220 I should actually say that the word student has quotation marks around it, because I'm still not sure he was a student, I think he was probably a secret state police. 00:00:31.220 --> 00:00:48.420 And I said two words, I said, Rendezvous B, in one hour. And Rendezvous B was the Western Railway Station. One hour later, I stood in that Rendezvous, not actually in the Rendezvous Point, but on a balcony overlooking it, to see who else was going to be waiting for me there, anybody with guns, or anybody with baseball bats like Chicago. 00:00:48.420 --> 00:00:53.420 Nobody else came there except eventually one student, or somebody who looked like a student, looking for somebody. 00:00:53.420 --> 00:01:02.580 So we went and introduced ourselves, and went immediately to somewhere else and had a coffee, and I said, I've been driving all night, I'm going to have to lie down for an hour or two, when am I speaking tonight? 00:01:02.580 --> 00:01:08.640 And he said, 6 o'clock. I said, how many students are going to be there? He said, there'll be 200 students there. 00:01:08.640 --> 00:01:17.640 I said, 200? I thought it was going to be like 5 or 10. He said, no, you can trust them, this is a student body, the Olympia, they're not going to talk out of school. 00:01:17.640 --> 00:01:20.640 And I said, I've got to lie down somewhere, because I've been driving all night. 00:01:20.640 --> 00:01:22.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:22.640 --> 00:01:23.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:23.640 --> 00:01:24.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:24.640 --> 00:01:25.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:25.640 --> 00:01:26.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:26.640 --> 00:01:27.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:27.640 --> 00:01:28.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:28.640 --> 00:01:29.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:29.640 --> 00:01:30.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:30.640 --> 00:01:31.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:31.640 --> 00:01:32.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:33.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:33.640 --> 00:01:34.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:34.640 --> 00:01:35.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:35.640 --> 00:01:36.640 And he took his cell phone, what the Germans call a handy phone. 00:01:36.640 --> 00:01:41.400 the person here just phoned we drove over to the student building parked around the back one street 00:01:41.400 --> 00:01:45.260 behind it we walked up the side of the student building as we walked up i said oh by the way 00:01:45.260 --> 00:01:49.320 is there a backing exit i can get out of if there's an emergency i'm always thinking ahead 00:01:49.320 --> 00:01:54.160 be prepared and he said he said um i said there's no there's no back exit i'm sorry 00:01:54.160 --> 00:01:59.210 so you begin to feel a little bit more worried now at this point i felt even more worried as 00:01:59.210 --> 00:02:04.230 we turned the corner into the main street with a student entrance on it and it's empty apart 00:02:04.230 --> 00:02:08.590 from three men on the opposite side of the street who immediately peered off the wall as they see me 00:02:08.590 --> 00:02:13.230 come around the corner and start walking diagonally across the street towards me three big burly men 00:02:13.230 --> 00:02:19.200 wearing wind jackets i say to him who are they he says i don't know and then as we get close he 00:02:19.200 --> 00:02:25.380 says the middle one i recognize him he's stopo stopo starts polizei state police the old guest 00:02:25.380 --> 00:02:29.780 stopo you remember in the hollywood movies the gestapo well he walks straight through them i 00:02:29.780 --> 00:02:33.080 just said mild side mild side to them good afternoon walk straight through and that rather 00:02:33.080 --> 00:02:35.200 non-plussed them because they hadn't expected me to speak to them 00:02:35.220 --> 00:02:40.960 german to my disposal the local vernacular and i said we'll go into the pub on the corner and 00:02:40.960 --> 00:02:46.680 and discuss what to do next he said no too late they're following us i never saw him again he 00:02:46.680 --> 00:02:50.660 spit off one way i spit off down back behind the building again followed by one of these three thugs 00:02:50.660 --> 00:02:55.020 i thought they were thugs i didn't believe they were police and he didn't this the policeman was 00:02:55.020 --> 00:02:58.620 following me 100 yards behind me didn't realize i had a car stacked around the back of the building 00:02:58.620 --> 00:03:03.100 i got around the back of the building and i can see the car parked there at the end of the end 00:03:03.100 --> 00:03:05.680 of the street the far end of the street i walked down the middle of the street and i saw a man 00:03:05.700 --> 00:03:11.060 of the street brisk with a brisk step shall we say not running but not actually walking and the 00:03:11.060 --> 00:03:15.020 guy is gradually gaining on me he doesn't know what i'm planning to do probably not even certain it's 00:03:15.020 --> 00:03:19.540 me and as i draw level with the car i press the keys in my pocket and i hear the answering clunk 00:03:19.540 --> 00:03:23.560 coming for the locks as the doors on the car unlock and i jump into the right hand side of 00:03:23.560 --> 00:03:28.220 the car and i sit down and i slam the doors and lock the doors and then i realize there's no 00:03:28.220 --> 00:03:32.360 steering wheel i'm on the wrong side of the car this is a swiss car not an english car 00:03:32.360 --> 00:03:35.580 it's a stupid thing to do i managed to get out of the car in 00:03:35.800 --> 00:03:39.340 and jump into the driver's seat and lock the doors again the guy hasn't quite caught up with me 00:03:39.340 --> 00:03:45.040 and i drive away in a flurry of of gravel and and burning rubber look in the mirror and there he is 00:03:45.040 --> 00:03:50.690 standing in the middle of the road and he's writing down the license tag of the car i mean in 00:03:50.690 --> 00:03:54.190 retrospect it's all rather funny at the time it was rather frightening i went and parked the car 00:03:54.190 --> 00:03:58.670 i phoned the student on his handy i said are we going to go ahead tonight somewhere else or not 00:03:58.670 --> 00:04:02.490 and he said no tonight is off so i said good that's all i wanted to hear i'm out of here then 00:04:02.490 --> 00:04:06.550 and years later of course you think hello that's funny he's been picked up by the police and he's 00:04:06.550 --> 00:04:06.610 gone and he's gone and he's gone and he's gone and he's gone and he's gone and he's gone and he's 00:04:06.610 --> 00:04:10.650 gone off with them in custody yet they let him keep his cell phone and take phone calls on it 00:04:10.650 --> 00:04:16.570 what's going on here he never visited me in prison i never saw him again i never heard a word from 00:04:16.570 --> 00:04:20.470 me he answered no letters my lawyers wrote down he didn't answer them i'm pretty certain he was 00:04:20.470 --> 00:04:22.530 a government agent i've been ambushed