The Seminar is also a revelation. The October air is bracing, the food nourishing, and the environment exhilarating. Right away, the argumentative journalist and teacher attendees discover we can debate every little point, and we're encouraged to slug it out. The anchor from CNN gets an earful about CNN's sound-bite reporting. Yes, CNN doesn't really look for long analysis.
Reporters get a gold star for being under the bombs in their designer suits.
The Americans, our benefactors and patrons, who feed us robust Austrian weiner schnitzel during the week, get hammered by liberals from the rest of the world. For now, anyway. But benefactors are benevolent, and the American contingent acknowledges its dominator status. Yes, it's true we are parochial, they say, and most Americans don't know which country is which in the new Balkanized Europe. But neither do I, to be honest, and I come from poor, poor India, much closer in spirit and economics to Eastern Europe.