The official taps her pen against her teeth, then against
the table, then against her keyboard. She stares at her computer screen, then
at my passport, then at my visa before scratching her chin and then looking me
over for the tenth time. I’m pretty sure my features haven’t changed since the
last time she looked. It’s all a farce anyway; I’m sure modern technology put all
my details up on her computer screen ten minutes ago.
Finally she stamps my passport and hands it back to me.
‘Welcome to Russia’ she’s says without a hint of meaning it. We’re finally
here. Hot. Cool. Yours. As they say in Sochi.
Inside the arrivals hall they’re quite a bit more friendly
and talkative. A young female ‘games maker’ validates my spectator pass and a
young male one organises a taxi for us.
This takes us to Adler Port where we have to go through
another security check and be issued with another pass before we board the
Grand Holiday (after yet another security check) which is to be our
accommodation for the week.
The Grand Holiday is a twelve story cruise ship
from Portugal and it is taller than most buildings I’ve been in. It is one of
six ships moored in the two ports at Adler and Sochi which are housing an
estimated 12,000 visitors over the two weeks of the Winter Olympics.
The rooms are your typical Travel Inn fodder, which is
disappointing considering the scale of the boat (and the price) but fine.
Everything else is designed to extract more money from you, so much so that
they give you a plastic card which is required for any purchases and which has
to linked to a credit card. Very sneaky.
Wi-Fi isn’t free, nor is water. The info in the room advises
us to purchase bottled water from them as drinking the tap water isn’t advised.
It also clearly states that the forbidden tap water comes from a drinking water tank. There’s a
contradiction in there somewhere and anyhow, it tastes fine to us.
Everything else on board, the bars and the restaurants etc,
are fairly posh. Breakfast is quite a feast, although sadly only available
until 10am which with a lot of people not getting back from venues until gone
midnight is a bit over strict and causes a last minute rush every morning. We get in
the habit of putting ‘do not disturb’ on the door and returning to bed
afterwards.
The Olympic Park is a mere stone’s throw away, not that
security would let you throw one, but the entrance itself is a couple of miles
around the security fence. This takes us around an hour to walk, so had we had
more than one day in the Olympic Park we would have done a one stop journey on the
train instead.
The train service is very efficient and we use it liberally with
five out of our six days spent up in the mountains at Krasnaya Polyana.
Our first event on Valentine’s Day is up at the Sanki Sliding
Centre, where we watch first the Men’s Skeleton from the start area and then
the Women’s from further down the course. We were therefore there to witness
first hand Lizzy Yarnold bring home the bacon and the gold medal.
Sadly we
couldn’t get into the finish area to see her flower ceremony and although we
were in the Olympic Park itself the next day we didn’t see the medal ceremony
as we were in the Ice Cube watching the Curling. Where we see the British women
lose on the last stone to Switzerland. The girls got revenge in the end beating
the Swiss in the Bronze Medal Match.
The doubters were wrong. A sea side location is a great
place to put an Olympic Park. It is the perfect setting with the snow clad
mountains as a backdrop and we are loving it inside the Olympic bubble.
Everything goes very smoothly, is organised like clockwork and
everything that matters is ready.
We were back at Sanki on Sunday and Monday seeing all four
runs of the Two Man Bobsleigh. As well as getting our faces painted. Kudos to
that particular games maker, as it’s not the easiest of flags to paint.
The games makers are everywhere. All young, dynamic, helpful
and exceedingly attractive. Well the female ones are. I can’t really vouch for
the male ones, that’s not my department, but I assume the same applies. There must have been a very rigorous selection process.
They’re
also all so incredibly eager to please. Hot. Cool. Yours. I guess, although I’m not
sure how you’d get one past security at the boat.
The natives are friendly too. All the Russians, who have turned
up in big numbers, seem extremely pleased to be there and to see us there
too. They even loved the Americans. Several people wanted to have their photos taken with
of us with our flag. Our too big flag according to L. Clearly size isn’t everything.
On Tuesday it was a case of Hot. Cool. Yours. And Wet. Very Wet.
As we spent the day amidst the rain at the Russki Gorki Jumping Centre for the Nordic
Combined. I was very impressed with the ski jumping both the sheer size of it
and the distance the guys jumped but less so with the Japanese chap’s broken
arm.
Tuesday was the only night we made it back to the boat in
time to eat in the restaurant, which was a bit of a blow out on the cost front
and on the size of the cheeseboard but it was our only proper meal of the whole
week.
Generally after a huge breakfast we survived on kebabs and the other stuff they sold at the venues which
was washed down with a Baltika 8, a 5% Russian wheat beer. On the ship in the
piano bar, which would have been better without the piano (but I guess it was
atmospheric) and the fellow Brits (who weren’t atmospheric just Scottish), we
drank Baltika 7, a 5.4% export lager.
We had the cheap seats for all the events we went to and
generally we had a brilliant view. The one exception was perhaps on our last
day at Laura watching the Biathlon, where although we get a great view of the
cross country skiing we couldn’t see the shooting and there were no big
screens.
All too soon it’s over and we’re on our way back
home, flying into Frankfurt with the Jamaican Bobsleigh Team and some chap from
the Canadian Freestyle Team. He gets asked about his sport at passport control,
I don’t. Clearly I don’t look athletic enough.
Sochi was a phenomenal experience and well worth the trip.
(Thursday 20th February)
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