From Varigotti to Vancouver

Did I tell you about my week-end in Varigotti ?

My friend Lucia is an incredible piece of character. I met her in my previous life, working for the international equestrian federation. She’s 40, Italian, extremely pregnant, strong and she just got THE job at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. She will be heading the media operations, and believe me, they will make it right, because she’s just good.

This means also that she will move to Vancouver soon, and her birthday party last week-end in Varigotti (a lovely village by the sea only 30 min away of Genova) saw her friends from all over the world come to Italy to celebrate. From Australia, Italy, Great Britain, Switzerland, Sweden… “All her life, past, present and future in one evening” her perceptive partner very rightly said.

I love Lucia, and I will miss her a lot during these three years when she will be living in Canada. Lucia and her three mobile phones, her sleepless nights where she’s cooking cakes for her son, Lucia and her common sense and abrupt way of saying what she thinks.

Before she opens her own blog to keep her busy during her long nights, I decided to have a look around to get an impression of the city and the Games preparation. Among several blogs I found about the Olympic Games (some very boring) I would just mention two attention-grabbing ones and another one… different.

On the common platform 2010 Daily Vancouver, worth mentioning is Dave Thorvarld who writes and podcasts about Winter Olympics culture, sports and economics.

Another important aspect of any Olympic Games’ project development is obviously architecture. Among many gigantic projects, the city of Vancouver is working a seawall circuit around the downtown peninsula which will go through one of the city’s most historically rich and socially complex streets: Carrall Street. “The design is meant to attract tourists and encourage a vibrant street life for residents in the area” explains JJ Lee, CBC Radio One columnist (his column is called Vancouver by Design).

Finally, coup de cœur for a blog by Andrew Bell, 28, who lives in Vancouver, talk about the city and his recent assignment for the 2010 Olympic Games. A real story teller… wittily describes his encounter with a squirl (a forest rat) up in the mountains in one post. In a striking piece of writing (“bang bang, my baby shot me down”) he depicts his reactions, when he happened to be on the street right after a shooting. He tells the morbid curiosity, the awkward adrenaline up and the blood on the road. Red, watery look… and the state of shock of realizing that if he hadn’t stopped to get money from the cash machine two minutes earlier, he might have been a witness to a Sunday shooting on Younge Street.

technorati tags: lucia vancouver canada winter olympic games birthday finale varigotti media