There were fourteen participants and six instructors. We had representatives from a lot of different countries - Albania, Slovakia, Bosnia, Finland, Serbia, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania, Denmark and Germany.
Since many of the participants not only host their own programs, but produce them as well, we got technical training as well. Here he's explaining the advantages of "split tracks".
This technician used baking bread as an illustration for his talk. And we got to eat the bread the next day! Yummy. I like how his mind works!
We worked long days and often into the night, but we did get to go out to eat dinner. This is in a hoiligger (dont know how to spell it). These are family-owned restaurants and they serve wonderful home-cooked meals.
It was intense training. We made three separate recordings. One program we had to write a script, another we had to conduct an interview and the third was our choice. We then recorded them. Finally they were listened to by the class and critiqued by the instructors. Everyone made their program in their own language. Mine had the disadvantage of being the only one everyone could understand since I did mine in English and English was the common language of the seminar. It was hard work.
We learned how to be better story tellers, learned about portable recording devices, microphones and which ones to use in which situations. We even got an introduction to sound mixers and I was just relieved that I have an excellent technician/producer so I dont have to do any of that stuff. He was, in fact, one of the instructors.
The end of the last evening they took time to take us into nearby Vienna. Well, nearby being relative. We walked a distance, took a bus, a train and a subway to get to the downtown area. It took about an hour and a half. We didnt have much time, but we did walk around the downtown a bit, visited a Christmas market which had a nice atmostphere with booths and lots of lights, but was a disappointment for Christmas shopping. This one was set up in a square in front of the parliament building.
Vienna, which is actually called Wien which is pronounced, Veen, is a lovely city. It escaped much of the damage during WWII so the lovely old buildings endure. They have taken pains to clean up the soot from the 19th century so the wonderful architectural details are easy to see and appreciate. As we walked we enjoyed the lights and decorations which were being put up.
Only in Vienna would the Christmas street lights look like chandeliers!
I headed for the airport to return home at 3 pm on Friday and entered my own little house around midnight. It is less than a two hour flight, but you must be there early, then there is the hour and half train ride home and the waiting for luggage and trains, etc. Our trip was two hours longer because a woman tripped on the stairs when entering the airplane. For some reason when she tripped, they turned the stairs around, trapping a dozen people on the stairs. We had to wait while an ambulance came, a policeman filled out a report, the engineers examined the plane for damage from the stairs, and the folks on the stairs were finally released from their prison, but instead of letting them enter the plane, they were taken back to the terminal, a ten minute drive by bus. We then had to wait for their return. When that was finally done we had an extra half an hour delay before we could get a place in the queue to take off. What is ironic about the whole thing is that the injured woman was sitting in the seat behind me for most of that time. She bumped her knee, was examined and released on the spot.
I guess Europe has to worry about litigation too.
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