The Ugly American

Last night I had dinner at a restaurant in Sauze d’Oulx that’s been nicknamed The Godfather, because of the pictures of Marlon Brando scattered on the tables. After waiting for a bus for nearly two hours in Sestriere, I got to Sauze at 11 p.m. – not an auspicious time to be looking for any place to be open on a Sunday night in most countries in Europe. But I met a photographer from Sydney on the bus, who’d been eating nearly every day in this place. We bumped into the owner on the street, and he said he’d serve us: homemade lasagna and red wine. Ah, Italy…

Not that I’m softening on the place much. I got home last night to find that the cleaning service had taken my towels but not replaced them. When I called the helpline this morning, I was informed that I had to deal with the (no doubt non-English speaking) cleaning service on my own, and that I’d have to go to some other little town to pick up some towels. I lost my temper when she told me to listen to her. “No, you listen to me,” I yelled, already late for the four hour trek to Bardonecchia this morning and feeling tired and unshowered and very much like an ugly American in all senses of the word. “I’m on a bus for a minimum of four hours every day and the last thing I have time to do is to find my way to some little town to pick up some towels.” She kept protesting that it wasn’t her problem to solve, and I kept yelling. Ugh. Finally she said she’d call the towel people (aka the cleaning people who also have never emptied my trash) but that she couldn’t promise anything. Looks like I will be trying to buy a towel somewhere – though I didn’t spot any Olympic-branded towels.

Currently I’m sitting in the media center in Bardonecchia, waiting for the finals of the women’s snowboarding to start. I’ve finally figured out what the media centers here remind me of: the extempers’ room from high school debate tournaments. For those of you not geeky enough to understand this reference, extemp is extemporaneous speaking, where you’d draw a current events topic and have a half an hour to prepare a seven minute speech. You had to keep your newspaper clipping files up to date (I wonder if they’re allowed to use the Internet these days?), and you’d lug around these huge file boxes. If you weren’t preparing a speech, you’d shoot the breeze with the other extempers, but it was all business if you were preparing. That’s kind of how it is here – lots of quiet chatting against the backdrop of mania to meet a deadline, and knowing that even if you’re chatting, your time of totall insanity will come.

Except sports reporters, for the most part, are a lot nicer than high school debaters. In general, they seem to fall into two camps: The first is the I’m-so-lucky-to-get-to-watch-sports-all-day-and-write-about it, totally laid back type, and the second is the just-because-I’m-a-sports-reporter-doesn’t-mean-I’m-not-a-super-awesome-hard-charging-newshound, and don’t-you-dare-think-for-a-second-that-I’ll-share-my-Bode-Miller-press-conference-quotes-with-you. Most of the guys here – and they are mostly guys – seem to fall into the first camp, though I am intimately familiar with the behavior patterns of the second, as some of the celebrity news reporters I encounter are that way. (Well, not so much the reporters but the editors, who want to make sure you know they have a brain, despite what they do all day.)

Right. Off to watch some snowboarding...