Ah… how ironic: I find myself nestled in the serene beauty of snow-covered Alps, towering over a vast valley that is the city of Torino; a city that is becoming more energetic and alive each hour as the sports world descends upon it. The sky for my first two days in Torino has been a brilliant blue, sunny, about 10 degrees. The local Italian volunteers and polizia greeting you at all entrance security checks are all smiles and typically charming. Warm, understanding smiles are shared with other foreign media people as you pass by.
Where is this irony, you ask? Ah, well, my first day on the job (with three hours sleep over the past 24 hours – I was awake, lying in my hotel bed at 1:30am WIDE awake until 6am rolled around and I decided to just get up and start the day, even though my first hadn’t quite ended, which still feels like, 2 days later, that “this morning” I awoke in Vancouver. Strange.) – the IRONY is this:
I spent the entire day with my lovely and charming young Italian driver-boy, Davide, in and out of shopping malls, hunting for thermoses and coolers for the likes of Peter Mansbridge and Brian Williams – a riot! And let me say this: simply because this shopping mall is in Italy, and the image one may conjure up is one of Louis Vuitton bags and fine leather boots, a mall is a mall is a mall. Noisy, crowded, fluorescent lighting, whining children, overweight families. The romance of touching down in the mountains of northern Italy evaporated as we entered the blocked solid parking lot of IKEA….
The International Broadcast Centre is an impressive site – a construction in what once was a Fiat factory, where organization and order are essential and well executed. The CBC folks I am working with are all lovely. Most of them are french and I have been pleasantly surprised how quickly and readily available my poor, very mediocre french returned. The chaos is likely to ensue as more personnel arrive and the stress of getting on the air successfully for the Opening Ceremonies set in.
I hope to attach photos soon of the bowels of this broadcast centre, along with the first of many Olympic shots. For now, alas, ’tis all about the malls.