In 2003 I travelled to Slovenia, touring with a show called City Life which performed at the Goli Oder ("Naked Stage) Improvisation Festival. It was my first time to Slovenia, and I made great friends, performed some great improv shows and represented the United States - which was interesting as it was six months after we invaded Iraq.
Our hosts were wonderful and put on a great festival which included some social and cultural activities designed to get us to learn a bit about Slovenia. It's not a very well known country, and as it was building its case for inclusion in the EU (which it gained the next year), putting on a good face seemed to be on everyone's mind.
The shows we performed were well-received and the festival as a whole got some great coverage in the media. If you can read Slovenian, check out this review from RadioStudent. Both of the daily papers, Delo and Dnevnik had writeups of the fest. A few days later, while on an excursion to the idyllic Lake Bled, I remember Dražen (one of our hosts, and our lead tour guide) throwing down that day's paper in disgust. Apparently, the paper mistakenly swapped captions on two photos from adjacent articles. One article was about the festival, while the other was about a program at a school for children with mental disabilities. But Dražen's disgust was not at the error, which appeared a few days earlier, but with the paper's printed apology - which was directed only to the "retarded children" and their school for confusing them with an improv festival. No apology to the improvisers.
Photo: From IYP Slovenia on Flickr, licensed via Creative Commons
