Late last year I remember reading Stefan’s trip reports from Sochi and thinking: the Olympics are going to be a disaster. There was hardly any infrastructure in place and winter was approaching. It just didn’t seem like there was enough time to get all of the required construction and accommodations done. There were only 3-4 months until the Olympics and most of the areas still required a massive amount of work in order to be ready to host one of the worlds largest sporting events.
Sure enough, anyone following the tweets of broadcasters and athletes attending the Winter Olympic games, you can see that there are problems with the Sochi Olympics. In fact, Sochi problems has become the rallying cry for what is being experienced in the city located on the eastern coast of the Black Sea.
If you watch the news or late night comedy shows, you have probably seen the pictures and descriptions of the incomplete hotels and overbuilt bathrooms of Sochi. The @sochiproblems Twitter account already has over 300,000 followers and is growing exponentially.
Hopefully the games themselves prove to be both competitive and compelling. I sincerely hope that shoddy construction and poor planning are the only problems that our athletes, journalists and fans have in Sochi. Hopefully we only have to remember Sochi for it’s quirky signs and overly intimate toilet arrangements.
For now, I just wanted to share these posts from Rapid Travel Chai (you should be reading his blog, he is one very thoughtful individual) and say that he earned the right to say “I told you so” for anything that happens these next two weeks.
For those seeking some more evidence of the budding disaster we have of an olympics, feel free to enjoy the tweets I have embedded below!
Incredible Hulk?
My teammate got stuck in the bathroom. Barefoot, naked and alone he called his inner strength. @JohnnyQuinnUSA pic.twitter.com/xvlKtYpaaT — Dallas Robinson (@DRobUSA) February 8, 2014
Someone’s Getting Fired
YOU HAD ONE JOB #SochiOpeningCeremony @sochiproblems #openingceremony pic.twitter.com/7MS5duuuHU — °Meryl°Evens° (@merylevens) February 8, 2014
Not Found… Presumably Hijacked by Russian Hackers
@SochiProblems Live feed of the opening ceremonies could not be more accurate #SochiProblems pic.twitter.com/zCX7AxG52l — GazinDesign (@GazinDesign) February 7, 2014
Not a Good Place for Disabilities
So… pic.twitter.com/zdLAN3ssU6 — Dan Wetzel (@DanWetzel) February 7, 2014
Men at Work
With opening ceremony of Olympics just five hours away, men are still hard at work in #Sochi. pic.twitter.com/CUeO65pZWa — Chris Kuc (@ChrisKuc) February 7, 2014
Final Thought
P.S. Russia is a place I have always wanted to visit, especially Moscow and St. Petersburg. I’m trying to not let the Sochi Olympic games fiasco influence my opinion, but with the Sochi problems and the guarantee that your computers/phones will be hacked, (update, this news story has since been proven to be false in many ways) it has sunk far down on my list of places to visit.