[photo © BG Street View] 

ATLANTA NICE

The north suburban Atlanta edge city of Dunwoody —or was it Sandy Springs?— was the site of this year's International Tourism Management Institute "Symposium," an annual gathering for alumni of ITMI, a school specializing in training tour directors. Attending in addition to grads of the program were a couple dozen tour companies presumably looking to recruit tour directors, and about a dozen expert presenters speaking on industry-related topics. The quality of this last group has noticeably bumped up since I last attended a Symposium.

And I hadn't been to Atlanta in years —way before the Olympics, way before their excellent rail rapid-transit system, MARTA. Although I saw little of the core city, I believe I did get a feel for today's Atlanta, and the impression was positive.

What struck me most was the combination of Southern courtesy and the absence of a regional narrowness.

The strongest impression perhaps, came shortly after my arrival at Hartsfield-Jackson airport when I sought out MARTA.

Operation of the fare-vending machines is not quite as intuitive or transparent as I might have expected. It seemed there was every option available except that of buying a simple one-way fare.

After a couple of failed attempts at figuring out these devices, I turned —at first reluctantly, in part on account of my experience with their Chicago counterparts— to the MARTA representative who was out among the public to offer help to confused travelers.

From the start, the rep could not have been more of a gentleman, courteous and patient with my Northern impatience and ultimately disarming. He guided me like a kindly uncle through the not-exactly-intuitive steps required for me to buy my fare. Oh, and, yes, he was, um, African-American and I, a, um, melanin-challenged American. The absence of any attitudes on his part stemming from such ethnic differences was also notable —another aspect of this town that I would repeatedly note.

What I did manage to see of the city itself was limited and for another post, but the courtesy and competence that met me on arrival seemed to set the tone for what proved a pleasant visit in this surprising city.