On October 27th, time stopped for five whole minutes, and I lay clame to some of the blaim.

At 17:30 PM sharp, more than 200 people at Utrecht Central Station froze while going about their business; tying shoelaces, eating a banana, lighting up a cigarette, taking (and posing for) a photograph, or locked in an intimate embrace. Five minutes later, they continued as if nothing had happened, and the ‘audience’ applauded.

A video:

The inspiration for this flash mob is “improv everywhere“, a bunch of New Yorkers who like to “cause scenes of chaos and joy in public places”, and who came up with the original “Frozen Grand Central”.

Our meeting point was outside the station, at five PM. The amount of participants grew, and everyone wondered who the instigator was (known only as “Andries”). A sixteen-year-old stood up, climbed a nearby statue, and after a short, confused pause from the audience, received a thundering applause. He explained the plan, gave some tips, made sure all our watches were synchronized, and wished us good luck.

It turned out to be a huge success. I froze as I was taking something out of my bag, which was a relatively comfortable pose. As we stood frozen, people started reacting. Two girls were “seriously creeped out,” a guy bumped into someone and made an effort to ‘catch’ the frozen statue, and a mother tried to explain what was happening to her confused daughter. I think it worked.

Even though all the credit for this goes to “AltijdAndries,” I feel ever so slightly responsible for what happened. A few weeks ago I posted a short ‘challenge’ on the dutch section of the improv everywhere forum, which was completely inactive and had less than ten members. I then forgot posting the message. Three weeks later, there were more than a hundred members, and ’some guy’ had set up a separate website and planned a ‘mission’ in Utrecht.

There’s a lesson here. When you do something irrelevant and then forget about it (because it’s irrelevant), it can lead to something of even greater irrelevance! Remember this.

For more reports, see the official site.