Credentials for the 2008 Olympics ... where to start?

cool mediterranean breezes, plenty of heineken and good people.

 

I hope I bought you a beer one night, or at least you caught one that fell off my tray.

 

You must have had better housing in SLC than I did... ;D

 

Best part about Athens and Turin was the fact that you had so much time before deadline to complete the story. You didn't have to bang it out while the event was going on to make deadline, which is what SLC, Sydney were and what Beijing will be. Sydney, especially, having to file stories off morning events to make EST deadlines.
Athens and Turin allowed some perspective to creep in, which is always nice.
As well as the opportunity to have a decent dinner before finishing stories and still filing them six hours before deadline.

 

Turin rocked. Happily surprised to find it was home to dozens of artisan chocolate shops.

Media food? How about a risotto bar in the cafeteria of the main press center?

It's Italy. You can't eat poorly.

 

I'm curious...

Was that for the radio station? Or, freelance?

 

There was a recent LA Times story about how the Chinese gov't is somehow cleaning up the air in Beijing just for the Olympics. Then it's back to the Black Lung.

 

Atlanta was trying, to say the least, and I knew where everything was. Was much harder for people who didn't know the city. Glad I did it. Doesn't pain me not to do it again.

If my paper had one athlete in its coverage area going, I can't imagine any cost/benefit analysis that would justify the trip, even if you haven't missed the application deadline.

 

Considering what the security was like there, I can't help but wonder how the fuck you pulled that off...

 

you've got me reminiscing. the risotto bar was great, but the woman whippin' it up most times for me was better known among my group as the risotto nazi. no requests - order and shut up was her philosophy. that part of italy is not known for red sauces. risotto is. small game ruled, too. as did ravioli or agnolotti in a butter-based brown sauce. the mcdonald's in the press center made a mean cappuccino. no lie. it was a real coffee machine. better than starbucks. the foreign press love their smokes and they think that right outside the door is as fine a place as any to light up. it's like walking through a log-cagin chimney in january. most nights, my goal was to finish the day with a decent meal. didn't always work. but there was a little wine bar near the mpc that would put together a meat and cheese tray for us and serve us bottles of wine until 4 in the morning. we put a hurtin' to the red wine, or the red wine put a hurtin' to us. either way, good times.

torino is also a city that is a place for white and black magic. well, they had a white magic night during the olympics -- most places, including museums -- are open all night. thousands of people are out in the streets. it was about 4 a.m. and i needed to get at least three hours of sleep. couldn't get a cab. the cab lines were hundreds of people deep. i went to a bus stop but i had no idea which bus would get me to my media hotel. every cab that passed had a passenger. (every cabbie think he's mario andretti.) i finally got smart and walked to a nice hotel, where they called me a cab. my pals were still searching for a cab when i got home. there was the colleague from another paper who was so hungry, he devoured a mozzarella ball as big as a softball in about a minute. you ride a bus up the mountain and there are brief moments in which the bus might go tumbling over a guard rail.

there's the stress of wondering if indeed a bus will arrive to take you back to the mpc. i nearly got lost in a maze of homes in the small town where the snowboarding venue was. by happenstance, i ended up sharing a table in cafe with a romanian woman (now living in nyc) who competed in the 1948 olympics. we drank bicerin, a popular piedmont hot chocolate drink. we had just walked through the church that houses the shroud of turin. you work like you've never worked before to make it all happen. i saw some original da vinci prints and saw books in a library that were 400 years old. or the night we wanted something other than italian food and ate a chinese joint where the menu was in italian.

i had been to italy prior but never to that region. had never been to greece and right now there's a 50-50 chance i'll return. i'll probably never to go to china on vacation. i'm seeing places most likely i'd never see otherwise. i relish a chance to cover the next olympics in russia.

i have memories that will last as long as my memory. i have them from salt lake and athens, too. if you get the chance to go and you can, do it.