Reporters on the Job

• PROVINCIAL TASTES: Geneva is among the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe. But the gathering of 500 women spiritual leaders from around the world this week (page 7) proved a challenge for some of the city's restaurants.

While covering the conference, the Monitor's Peter Ford stopped in for a bite and witnessed the travails of one waiter trying to cater to the different dietary restrictions observed by the Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and Jewish women eating together at the same table.

"You shouldn't have come here," he told them as he went back to the kitchen one more time to check whether the vegetable soup had been made with a meat broth. "This restaurant serves Swiss specialities."

• MEDIA SAVVY IMMIGRANTS: Reporter Coral Davenport in Athens, knows that sometimes people don't know The Christian Science Monitor. But while reporting today's story about an American woman running for office in Greece (page 1), she was surprised by who did – and didn't – know the paper. Coral called the office of Christos Papoutsis (the mayoral candidate of the same party as the American woman).

"The people at his office had no idea what paper I was working for, assuming that it was a religious periodical. I figured I'd encounter the most confusion when calling people in the migrant community – but in fact, the leaders of the Sudanese, Nigerian, and Filipino communities immediately recognized the paper. 'Oh, your paper is very well known,' they told me and were happy to talk, giving articulate, media-savvy quotes."

David Clark Scott
World editor