Year: 2014
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Thirteen Years Later
9/11/2014: A day to remember how I once remembered “Black Tuesday” WALL OF GHOSTS At a hospital near my home, there is a memorial to Nine/Eleven. It is a brick wall hung with hundreds of “Missing” Flyers, sealed behind plexiglass. These are the faces of those who were lost that day. I call them ghosts.…
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Riding the Rails
I admit, I have a romantic view of riding trains. Perhaps because the paternal grandfather I never met was a train man, or the fact that Dad would seek out some vintage train on an unused track and take my brother and me on a Choo-Choo train ride (old whistle and all), or that my…
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Time for Reflection
I have always regarded travel as a chance to learn about myself by seeing the reflection of who I am through the eyes of strangers. So, for me this has been a time of self-awareness. And, also a time to see what it means to be an American at this particular moment of history. I…
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A Day at the EU Commission
You could not find a better time to visit the European Commission. The crisis in the Ukraine being front and center of their attention — the signing of the “association” agreement happening a little over a week from this post. We are coming to the end of our two-week adventure, we 13 U.S. journalists…
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An Eye-Opener
I have certainly heard about Radio-Free Europe, but in Prague, I learned how very little I understood about that service. Right up front, RFE, as it is often called, does not even broadcast to Europe. Instead, it aims its signals, its journalism to Asia. I and 12 other journalists were given the chance to…
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Don’t Head to ATM without your Friends
Our group of 13 journalists arrived in Prague rather early for check-in. Which meant some of the group got rooms, most did not. And so we set out in small groups for a quick lunch and a bit of exploring. “I”m going to a cash machine to get my Czech Koruna” (the euro likely works…
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Really, We ARE Working
Lest I give the wrong impression that all I and 12 other U.S. journalists are doing is eating and watching the World Cup here in Germany — we are learning an immense amount about Germany and the reunification of East and West Germany. I am taken by all that I am learning. Whole populations…
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World Cups and Stuff
The image of this naked Don Juan was all over Berlin. I am pretty sure it is for the opera. But how cool is it that commuters are seemingly unphased by imagery like this. It is likely universal that provocative subway ads invite, how you say, “rider enhancements.” Thus, we see Don’s brassiere, or…
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We are the World (Cup)
World Cup madness has hit Germany – and I guess, considering the name of the competition: the entire world. Everyone is certainly buzzing about it here. Soccer isn’t such an obsession in America — though I hear it is catching on. Not sure I even want to be around when Germany plays its first game…
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Window or Aisle Seat?
This is how a German political correspondent from ZDF described U.S. television. After pointing out the alarming dearth of print news outlets — many parts of your county have only one regional newspaper — (which, alas, is true) — he allowed as how our audiences have two choices: MSNBC and Fox. Or, as he rather…