Reporting For Duty
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Categories
In this Discussion
The Great Bond Geoguesser Game
NickTwentyTwo
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Hi all, I had an idea that this might be a fun game: the idea basically is you search for a location important in the Bond-verse, post a screengrab here, and everyone has to guess where the location is / why it's important to the Bond-verse.
Will it be too hard? Maybe we can also provide clues? I don't know. Let's see how it goes, and I'll kick things off:
Some clues right off the bat maybe:
Will it be too hard? Maybe we can also provide clues? I don't know. Let's see how it goes, and I'll kick things off:
Some clues right off the bat maybe:
- Not an English speaking country.
- Important more to the novels than the films.
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
sounds like a nice idea, but I'm afraid I don't see an image here...apart from the fact that I overlooked your post for almost a week.
EDIT: If you are familiar enough with the correct novel, the clues in the image more or less spell the solution out for you.
@NickTwentyTwo, as a benevolent criticism, I think there was no need to mention it was not in an English-speaking country, and especially none for leaving the "Boulevard" marking on the street there (one can disable that on Google Maps)... which sort of gives something away. So I think it was too easy.
Haha I was worried it would be too hard! But you're right of course, it's the address for SPECTRE in TB. I welcome the constructive criticism.
Did you want to post one for us to guess?
EDIT: If you want, you can DM me a location and I can get the image up in the thread for others to guess.
Thanks for the offer, but I'm not really totally unprepared once I realised I was probably the first to post the right answer :-).
I would just not restrict this to Street View, but suggest a satellite photo. The object shown plays a role in a literary work of the Bondverse, and in fact about two thirds of that work takes place in the immediate vicinity of it, but of course adjusted to the time it was written.
Well, here it is:
I'll just wait if something comes up :-) and give further hints if the results are somewhat flaccid.
Edit: I invite those specialists on European history, say @DarthDimi and @Dragonpol, to take a look at this even if they don't feel like playing games.
Further edit: I didn't mean to leave out @CommanderRoss on purpose
It's the German Finance Ministry building across the street from Checkpoint Charlie so that makes the Bond connection The Living Daylights?
PS: @NickTwentyTwo, the "blue dome" is in fact a hot-air balloon :-)
Nice detective work! Even if finding it was a bit of blind luck, as per the Sergeant. The "two thirds of the story" clue confounded me a bit, but did make me think of the short stories. Didn't make the connection to TLD though. Well done.
"The Living Daylights" (the short story or novella) is about Bond attempting to shoot a Soviet sniper to allow an eastern defector to cross the border that ran along Zimmerstrasse in Berlin (before the wall was built along the same line). Bond stayed in an old apartment building at the corner of Wilhelmstrasse and Kochstrasse (south of Zimmerstrasse, but in the Western sector), overlooking a bombed-out area where basically nothing was left standing. The next structure worth mentioning was the GDR's Haus der Ministerien (House of Ministries), where he ultimately detected the sniper who morphed into Kara Milovy for the TLD movie.
The "Haus der Ministerien" was originally built in 1935 as Göring's Ministry of Aviation, with the usual pomp, grandeur and excess typical for that era. It surprisingly survived WWII and ended up in the Soviet sector and was later used for several ministries of the GDR (hence the name in the TLD story). After the fall of the wall, it was used as the seat of the so-called Treuhandanstalt (literally, Trust Agency) that was commissioned to privatise GDR enterprises that were deemed viable...not very many, and there was much resentment to the work of the Treuhand. Its head at the time, Detlev Rohwedder, was killed by a sniper (how fitting in connection with the TLD story!) from the RAF (not Royal Air Force, but Red Army Faction) in 1991. It has since been renamed the Detlev Rohwedder Building and now houses the Federal Finance Ministry.
By the way, Fleming describes it as an ugly square building. But I do think it has a certain style of esthetics (and has doubtless been landmark-protected for ages; check it on Wikipedia or whereever). My theory goes anyway that the Nazis knew very well what was esthetically pleasing and used it for their purpose (not just here), with lots of symmetry and Greek-classical allusions. It's just where they went overly gigantic with their designs that people (justifiably) balked. A lot of what the Nazis built is ugly because of that megalomania, but nothing is ugly just because the Nazis built it. They knew how to influence people by giving them what was actually pleasing to the eye...albeit to further their own purpose.
PS: Anyway to @CharmianBond, I guess it's your turn.
Right, I've gone back to Street View. Hopefully this one shouldn't be too difficult but let's see how we get on.
Whatever, it's too late for me by now. Talk to you tomorrow.
You're bang on @j_w_pepper it is the Avenue of the Americas but there is a more direct reason I chose it. Does anyone want to take a guess before they return?
Oops, sorry @CharmianBond, this sort of coincided, but I'll think about it tomorrow.
No worries, get some rest 🙂
I also agree though that the game should stick mainly to literary Bond, but I wouldn't mind sprinkling a few film ones in too. I think it'll be interesting to see as we get settled into the game how it'll work with non-Fleming books.
I guess it is the House of Diamonds then (its address is actually 50 West 47th, around the corner). In the DAF novel, Bond is informed by M that the Spang Bros. bought control of a "House of Diamonds" and also meets "Shady" Tree there, though we can only guess if the one in your picture is really the same enterprise as the one in the novel. It's a rather generic name in a "Diamond District" anyway, and Fleming places it on West 46th Street.
(And no, I didn't remember all that but was tempted to look it up. Good opportunity to re-read at least bits and pieces of Fleming, so thank you for making me do it.)
'He went on and turned right into the Avenue of the Americas, stopping in the first doorway, the entrance to a women's underwear store where a man in a tan suit with his back to him was examining the black lace pants on a particularly realistic dummy.'
PS: @CharmianBond and @NickTwentyTwo: Whose turn is it? Just to avoid killing this thread before it really got going.