Camera shy

“Oh my gosh…there we are. We are on TV!” I heard someone shriek from behind me. The room burst into noise and rustling. You would think our mushroom lasagna had burst into flames and was torching the kitchen at how quickly everyone ran out of the kitchenette to gather around a television smaller than the box of wine we had tapped for dinner at this announcement.


With the furry I turned around from the layers of fresh pasta and finely grated parmigano that I was lining a pan with and I could instantly feel my face rush red in a warm blush at the sight of myself taking notes on television.

My hair was disheveled – in a tangled mess partially covering my face. In my hands was my jacket that I had to take off because of the hot production lights over head which caused my note taking to look awkward and nerdy.

I didn’t know they were filming us then, I thought to myself. While it is notable that Rété Veneto doesn’t put on a “show” for the news, I really could have used some hair and makeup.

On Tuesday morning my travel writing, cultural communications, and ethic courses visited Rété Veneto, a television station in Bassano del Grappa. An office, hidden on the outskirts of town, in a building that doesn’t even seem large enough for a family of four, is a surprisingly small production facility for the station that transmits to a region the size of Chicago.

Inside was even more cramped, especially when you are trying to maneuver around 14 extra people through small offices, production rooms, and a multi-use studio. Taking up more than half of the entire hallway standing shoulder to shoulder our group quickly settled around Angelica, one of the newsroom editors, for our tour accepting that we were going to be uncomfortably close for the next hour and half.

Even though early in the morning and close enough to my class mates to know if each showered the night before, the company tour was eye opening to the differences between Italian news and American news.

“One thing is the journalist, one thing is the news” Angelica said describing American and Italian news. American news is more about the show – it’s over the top and glamorous, while the Italian news is all about just the news, she continued.

Throughout the remainder of the day we came to learn this fact well. Standing around the studio, we were told we were going to be on the 10:45 news brief with the pattern station. Immediately my hands started sweating and I’m sure my eyes were probably wide with anxiety.

The lights from the overhead were bright and hot like the most miserable summer day, which did not help calm my nerves. When we were grouped together behind Angelica I made sure to stand off to the side and not directly behind her to try to avoid the camera.

Once the camera was off and I stopped holding my breath, I was glad that I did a great job of staying off the camera almost the entire time. But obviously you just can’t hide on stage.

RIP my beloved Keds

RIP my beloved six dollar blue and green plaid Keds.

My pile of dead shoes continues to grow as I travel more and more around Europe. I have now lost two of my most favorite pairs of shoes.

Barcelona saw the end to my black flip flops that I have had since I was 12. They were perfectly molded to my feet and even though they were wearing millimeter thin in spots they were the most comfortable pair of shoes I have ever worn. The bottoms of the flip flops were so worn that they have almost killed me several times. They have zero traction. Whenever it rained I had to walk perfectly flat or I would fall right on my face.

When I was a senior in High School, my band traveled to Victoria, Canada for a parade. One afternoon there was a freak rain storm and as we walk to the olden day photo shop I slipped and sprained my wrist; yet I still love them.

They also almost killed me another time. The spring of my freshman year of college my friends and I decided to go rafting down a river near Sweet Home, Oregon. I wore my beloved black flip flops because I have really soft feet and hate walking on the rocks. It also happened to rain that day, but we decided to float the river anyway. It was below 50 degrees outside and I’m sure the river was well below that temperature because the rain almost felt warm when you were out of the water. About half way down the river, exhausted from high water and I’m sure almost hypothermic we decided to cross the river and hike up the bank to the road and call our friends to pick us up. Stupidly I decided to wade across the river with my flip flops on. The water was up to my chest and strong. All of a sudden one of my flip flops slid off of my foot and began floating downstream. Knowing I loved those shoes and could not lose them, I reached for shoes and left my raft. Yet the current was too strong and started to carry me down stream. I reached one flip flop as the other came off and I hit the rapids. Crying out to my friends I desperately tried to grab at the rocks beneath me but they were to slick. Finally I turned on my stomach and landed on some rocks that brought me to a halt before I hit the second rapids. Crying, bruised, and scratched in only my bathing suit I laid of the rocks and called for my friends to come get me – but also to make sure to grab my flip flips. I was not going to leave without them.

Barcelona brought an official final end to my flip flops. As we went out to find some dinner one of my travel buddies accidentally stepped on the heel of my shoe, ripping the strap from the sandal and tearing the weak rubber. I thought I might cry – but the first thing that ran through my head was my sister laughing – see absolutely hated those flip flops, thinking they were the ugliest things she’d ever seen. To make the situation worse, we were too far from the hostel to return for me to put on a new pair of shoes so I had to improvise and tie off the strap and basically walk on one foot around the dirty floors of the Barcelona metro and grainy sidewalks along the beach.

However, my six dollar Keds made it through that trip to Barcelona and up and down all the stairs. They even survived my trip to Florence – horse back riding and being chased through the streets. They saw more laps around Paderno then I would like to admit and even made it to Prague, Czech Republic. But that is where the fun ended.
The historically old streets of Prague are rough and uneven with small cobble stones that make walking difficult. I can’t even imagine trying to maneuver those streets in Stilettos, but my Keds were going great. The smooth sole and light weight fabric traveled great over the rocky pathways; yet by the second afternoon a large hole in the heel started to appear and by the end of the day my shoes were “talking” the flap opened so far.

With a deep sadness I packed up my Keds back in my bag and went to the mall in Prague and bought myself a new pair of tennis shoes. Again only the equivalent of six dollars, my new black and gray high tops roamed the streets of Munich, Germany, up the frozen paths to the Disneyland castle in Fussen and wondered the barren streets of Bratislava. Each day I was reminded of my loss, seeing my Keds sitting out-of-service in my bag – yet I could not throw them out.

Now sitting in my room in Paderno are my sad, broken, shoes that have been through so much with me. I feel as if throwing them in the trash and leaving them in Italy just doesn’t seem appropriate.

Would haling them back to the States and burning them in a good bye ceremony be too much?

Behind the Quiet Walls of Bratislava

Two hundred and twenty Slovenian crowns left to spend and two hours left to kill. I wondered into a small café and souvenir store off of the main square in Old Town Bratislava. Originally intrigued by the posters of croissants and coffee I decided to sit down at a small corner table with red and white checkered table cloth and table lamp for a second lunch in a measly attempt to spend the remainder of my Slovenian money.

At the counter I eyed a delectable looking chocolate mousse and banana cake. Ordering with only charades and pointing I managed to get a slice and a round warm cup of cappuccino for less than 100 crowns or three euro and then settled into my corner table with my book. Over head was the light and upbeat music of the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. The music carried my thoughts and spirits lighter after a long 7 days traveling around the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire. A quiet moment to myself to think and just really enjoy my surroundings, then I suddenly realized…

Wait! I’m in Bratislava! I actually made it to Bratislava…

Just under four years ago I sailed by that same Bratislava. Recognizable by the large castle fortressed with four corner watch towns that loomed over the entire city at the highest point of the Danube river valley, Bratislava was one of my young and naive dream cities that I wanted to visit. Built off of impressions I gathered from watching the movie Euro Trip with my high school friends, Bratislava in my mind was a poor eastern European city where two pennies could buy you the world. However, on that trip my dreams of seeing the city would sail by on the hydropower boat that carried my high school travel group and me smoothly past on our way to Vienna.

It is still remarkable to me, that my second travel week here at CIMBA panned out that my travel group of four girls wanted to stop by Vienna before returning home to Paderno del Grappa. Since I had already visited the gold clad palaces and gothic style cathedrals of Vienna, Austria, I pulled from my high school dreams the chance to visit Bratislava.

At 7:00 am Saturday November 16, I yanked myself drowsily out of my bunk bed at the Wombats Hostel in Vienna and grabbed my purse and black and white pea coat and made my way to the West Bahn train station to cross the border of Vienna to Slovakia and the undefined border of Western to Eastern Europe.

Only an hour away from Vienna, Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia, a country that has seen war for centuries. The country only gained its independence in 1993 when Czechoslovakia divided into the Czech Republic with Prague as its capital and Slovakia represented by Bratislava.

A city on the rise, Bratislava is starting to flourish as a European hub along the Danube River however its dark history can be seen in every crackling stone building, bullet hole filled walls, and constant military presence.

I arrived at the small, empty train station outside of Bratislava around nine in the morning and quickly realized that I should have printed off a map or found directions before I left because no one spoke English. Finally I found someone in the train station who sold me a map and pointed me in the right direction of the bus.

Take bus 80 – five stops.

One. Two. Three. Four.

I counted to myself as the bus scooted through the west bank of Bratislava and over the main bridge to Old Town, not knowing where I would end up if I lost count.

Five. I jumped off the bus and before me laid the entrance to Old Town and above my left shoulder watched the castle.

Old Town, more than just the walled in portion of Bratislava, was a whole another world. Within the walls, the mix of eastern and western cultures converged in the city streets; however, with each winding street the Old Town remained ghostly dead. Beyond a few small tourist groups and the random store owner, the streets were empty. You could walk for a few blocks and not see a sole, as if you were the only one left.

The city on the outside, people ran around wildly, sirens constantly rang with police cars chasing one another – the people inside with dark masks covering their faces, and trams honking at pedestrians crossing the crowded streets. Yet within the walls of Old Town remained a quiet peace – a peace though that swallowed with it a feeling of deep sadness, in hopes of a revival for the town.

My own mind raced with the history of Bratislava as I read my walking tour guide map and strolled through the Old Town’s many squares and stared in awe at the castle’s grand walls.

But then I spotted that café with its red and white checkered table clothes, warm cappuccino, and moist, crumbly cake. With each bite and sip I was able to quiet my own mind like the walls of Old Town for Bratislava. I was able to swallow the frustrations of traveling to revive my spirit and excitement and – well of course – spend a little cash in a city where you can still almost buy the world for two pennies or at least something more valuable - a new state of mind.

Presidential Election

In the dead of night or first minutes of the morning darkness – you know, that time in the middle of night where it is the darkest and coldest immediately before the sun starts to peak above the horizon, I strangely felt the closest to home through the blare and bright repetitive flash of the TV screen. Thousands of miles away from the United States and I still almost believe I could hear the hopeful and excited cheers echoing off the Atlantic waves.

Barack Obama is the 44th elected president of the United States, the cheers announce in unison roar.

While people back in the United States were just finishing up dinner and settling down in front of their televisions or traveling to Grant Park or Times Square to watch the election live on November 4, 2008, it was already the 5th here in Italy and way past my bed time. I wondered over to the Simpson room on the CIMBA undergraduate campus from the computer lab a little after midnight. The sun had long gone down and the cold mountain wind that rushes down the steep slopes of Mount Grappa was swirling the leaves around the cobble stone path ways. The Simpson room, the common meeting place with chairs and a T.V. and satellite from the US Army base in Vicenza, was already scattered with the few other students dedicated enough to the presidential campaign to sacrifice sleep. The three almost-comfortable chairs were already taken by this time with students dressed in flannel pajamas and sweatshirts. Also it was obvious from the open plastic wrappers from candy bars, empty tan coffee cups from the vending machine, and paprika potato chips, they had already been there awhile and were prepared for the long night ahead.

Coverage of the election started about 1 am. Still wide awake from excitement, the first states closed the polls and one by one blinked red or blinked blue up on the screen.

Red…

Blue…

John McCain was ahead 5 electoral votes after the first two states announced.

For the next two hours, the five of us who survived past one thirty at night, sat transfixed by the screen as the colors illuminated the voters decision and illuminate peoples hopes and dreams for the United States.

By a little past 3 am and after 2 cups of cappuccino, a coconut chocolate bar, an apple with peanut butter, and a bottle of water, I started to wind down – finally giving in and pushing four chairs together and wrapping up in a blanket to try to get comfortable; yet determined to make it to the official president-elect announcement.

A Barack Obama swayed room, each time a blue state would appear on the screen a tired, strung out cheer would erupt, keeping us on our toes and letting everyone know we were still conscious.
3:30 am marked the hour when only the strong would survive with our group dwindling down to just myself and fellow Oregon student Jill. It also marked when Ohio turned blue – a battle state, notorious for voting with the winner. Twenty electoral votes went over to Obama’s side by a close margin of only 3%.

With still almost half the country to finish voting, Jill and I enjoyed the low-budget, ridiculous commercials on the Army satellite station and the educational presidential facts reported by Brian Williams.

Even though we already knew that Obama was going to win the election, Jill and I were on edge. Finally a little past 5:00 am, the screen all of a sudden split out. Washington, Oregon, and California had not closed their polls yet, but flat on the screen in gold and the patriotic red, white, and blue read that Obama was the elected 44th president of the United States of America.

Shocked, we sat sitting at the screen asking, What? Huh? What's going on? And then the news station panned to the crowds of people celebrating in Grant Park, Chicago.

At that moment, even half way across the world, I could sense a change in the attitudes of people. Looking at the numerous flags over Barack Obama’s head as he gave his winning speech, I felt proud to be an American again for the first time in eight years.