Personal site of journalist, baker, and storyteller Tony Ganzer.
Blog posts on media, introspection, society, and more.
Editor’s Note: This is another in a series of sound-rich portraits of European cities and sites. In this episode, I try to capture the feel of an Alpine town relying on nature’s beauty and a fiction writer’s legacy to offer a unique and worthwhile experience.
But despite this frenzy I told my wife I wanted to take a family day. I had worked the Sunday before, on short notice, and we had a little time to plan something nice. So yesterday we boarded the Helvetia, and set off to the medieval quarter of Rapperswil. (slideshow included)
After a brief hiatus here is another Audio Dispatch, this time from Geneva. This series of sound-rich dispatches is intended to give a personal impression of European cities through the images and tones gathered during a walk down a street.
Except here I sit, in Zurich, and the taste of strawberry ice cream is still faintly, and expensively, on my lips.
Editor’s Note: In this second audio dispatch I take to the streets of London. I search out sights and sounds which tell the tale of this city now, and how it once was. With archived news stories from Edward R. Murrow I juxtapose war-time London against the present-day hustle and bustle. Photos, audio and transcript included.
Editor’s note: I often write dispatches after visiting a new city, but I wanted to try to use my skills as a radio guy for this post and perhaps begin a series of audio journals, postcards, or dispatches giving a taste of a city through my eyes and ears. I walked through the streets of Strasbourg and produced this piece..perfect to be enjoyed with a cup of coffee or tea and an open imagination. Script and photos included.
(Music: Yann Tiersen – “Le jour de l’ouverture”)
Continue reading “Audio Dispatch: Strasbourg”
It comes over you immediately after disembarking the subway–the pressure to maintain your cool as the Parenting Game begins. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to play. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t know there is a game going on.
But as the groups of families and friends rush faster and faster toward the exit, hoping to be first to pay 9 Euros to enter the zoo, you realize there is something odd here. People stare you up and down, judging you with their eyes. They look at your baby stroller and then look at their own…they must have spent 1 or 200 Euros more on their stroller and smirk with superiority.
Visiting the zoo is supposed to be a time to relax and observe animals in their natural (man-made) habitats…but our visit today turned more into a sad study into the human condition.
Our trip to the zoo was prompted by a few things, the most important and relevant being our young man’s newly-found interest in animals, and communicating with them. See a bird, and want to say something? “Caw, caw” he’ll answer. See a lion? “Rawr.” And perhaps you see a dog, or any other animal? “Bow wow” is the default, universal language for all things animal.
Continue reading “The Zoo and the Parenting Game”