Journalists Tweet That Sochi Olympics Are More Like Hunger Games

By
Tiffany Willis Clark
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2-8-2014 8-52-07 AM

 

2-8-2014 7-57-31 AM

 

2-8-2014 7-58-26 AM

 

 

 

OK so Sochi is an adventure. In more ways than one. The athletes accommodations are reportedly acceptable (barely), but the hotels in town? Now so much. And the journalists are having a field-day reporting the horrors via Twitter. From Canada.com journalist Bruce Arthur:

Almost every room is missing something: lightbulbs, TVs, lamps, chairs, curtains, wifi, heat, hot water. Shower curtains are a valuable piece of the future black market here. (One American photographer was simply told, ?You will not get a shower curtain.?)

Most journalists arrived to find that they didn’t have the rooms they’d booked. German photographer Joerg Reuter did have a room, but…

[Reuter] arrived in the mountains and found the first room offered to him to be full of construction debris, with yellow-brown water and appliances that didn’t work.

The next room had construction workers still sleeping in it. The third room had a stray dog in it. Reuter was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, ?When I came out of the elevator, there was the dog. I said, ?Right, that’s it.??

As for the dogs, Sochi has hired a private company to go around murdering the strays. Bruce Arthur says that this makes every stray you see seem like the hero in a Disney movie. A quote by the “pest control firm” representative Alexei Sorokin via Deadspin:

The dogs have been causing numerous problems, Sorokin said Monday, including “biting children.”

He said he was stunned last week when he attended a rehearsal for the opening ceremony and saw a stray dog walking in on the performers.

“A dog ran into the Fisht Stadium, we took it away,” he said. “God forbid something like this happens at the actual opening ceremony. This will be a disgrace for the whole country.”

Really? And lining them up to execute them — and everything else mentioned in this article — isn’t a disgrace?

Besides just being inconvenient, there are some serious safety issues.

Sports Illustrated’s Brian Cazeneuve had to clamber through a window to get out of his hotel on Tuesday morning, since the doors were all unexpectedly locked.?

Oh, and one journalist in the Omega hotel complex had to refuse a colleague’s request to stay a night in the second twin bed because ? well, there’s no easy way to say this, but when the first journalist arrived, someone had left an indeterminate amount of semen on the sheets of the second bed, and those sheets had been taken away for cleaning, and hadn’t come back.

 

Yes, this is an empty elevator shaft.

 

 

Johnny Quinn’s training came in handy.

 

 

 

 

If you thought this was the biggest problem with the winter games, think again.

 

 

 

Making new friends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a hotel room and its decor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And who did the translations for their menus and stuff? Putin?

 

 

This poor guy who was locked out of his room. And no one had a key.

 

 

 

 

 

The unfortunate elevator(s) that stopped working.

 

 

Yes, he gets credit for being resourceful.

 

A possible reason that the Russians are so homophobic? Yikes.

 

 

That crazy story about them planning to bring in people to shoot the stray dogs before the Olympics? True.

 

 

 

Lobby? Seriously, you want a lobby?

 

 

 

 

 

WTF

 

 

West Virginia, you ain’t got nothing’ on Sochi.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let there be light fixtures and light bulbs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“It’s good to touch the green, green painted grass at home.”

 

 

Anyone notice a little something missing here?

 

 

 

Slumber party for tweens? Nope. Beds for Olympic athletes.

 

 

 

 

A new Olympic event: navigating open manholes.

 

 

Oh yeah, let’s schedule a little emergency situation drill during Olympic week.

 

 

 

 

Creative way to hide the fire hose.

 

 

 

Teamwork makes the dream work.

 

 

 

Wildlife includes stray dogs…and bugs.

 

 

 

 

Just in case someone might try…

 

 

The lucky ones.

 

 

 

About town.

 

 

 

Pardon our dust while we finish building this town. Two days into the Winter Olympics.

 

 

 

 

 

Hey! They had a solution. Shut up.

 

 

 

Ladies first.

 

 

Come on, how many hours a day do you need hot water?

 

 

 

Hey, don't complain. At least your door DOES open.

 

 

They did this on purpose. For the really tall athletes. The ones that don't fit in the beds.

 

 

 

It's curtains.

 

 

 

There are some benefits.

 

 

I don't...know.

 

 

My 100-year-old cottage miles from civilization uses a septic tank. Apparently so does the 51 billion dollar Sochi Olympic complex.

 

 

 

New Olympic event: making this toilet seat work for you.

 

 

Well, at least these guys may not get hacked.

 

 

No fishing in the toilets???

 

 

No expenses spared in hotel decor.

 

 

And the ammenities!

 

No toilet but lots of bathroom storage space.

 

Front row seats anyone?

 

 

Tiffany Willis Clark
I had a successful career actively working with at-risk youth, people struggling with poverty and unemployment, and disadvantaged and oppressed populations. In 2011, I made the decision to pursue my dreams and become a full-time writer. Connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

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