On August 8, night falls over Paris as the cauldron containing the Olympic flame, attached to a balloon, rises from the Tuileries Garden with the Eiffel Tower in the background.JOEL SAGET/Getty Images
On the first day of the Paris Olympics, my free metro card stopped working. It was terribly hot and rainy and my attitude was not Olympic.
I spoke to the ticket agent in pidgin French. She told me to go to the entrance, which was not near her counter, and press the “help” button.
I go there. I do that. A voice like it’s from Jabba’s palace comes over and starts barking at me incomprehensibly.
Then a passing commuter stopped. I pretended to be helpless. She tried to address my request, but the lady on the intercom cut the line.
My Good Samaritan suddenly became furious. She threw up her hands. Her eyes widened. She slapped her hands against her thighs. She hung her head. I had the feeling that this was not the first time someone had hung up on me on the subway.
“You follow me,” she said.
Excuse me?
“You’re coming. After me,” and then she mimed how we both went through one of those turnstiles/sliding doors in the Paris metro. An exaggerated lifting and setting of her feet, which I found – excuse me – very mimic-like.
These turnstiles aren’t big. I am. So I had to lay across their backs to get through.
Then a cheerful “Bonne journée!” and she was gone.
These were the Olympic Games in Paris.
As usual, the horror stories worked. Fearing disruptions around the clock, Parisians left the city. This resolved most of the disruptions.
Away from the venues, the city was a ghost town compared to its normal state, with every visit to every restaurant eventually ending in complaints about lack of business.
A waiter suggested we visit one of his favorite bars nearby. Would we see him there later?
“Non,” he said sullenly. “There is no business. And I am sad.”
I think that’s why they built bars in the first place, but the French mentality is complex. The bar was wonderful. We saw the waiter there later. He didn’t look sad.
Paris in the summer, when there’s a bit of leeway and everything is still open, is even better than Paris under normal circumstances. And normally it’s the greatest city in the world. So this was the Olympics that couldn’t fail.
Did everything work? No. Almost nothing worked as it should.
A little scary? Yes. None of the last Olympic Games – including Sochi – were so obviously militarized.
Was everything to your liking? No. What is it with the French? They reject it. In the metro there is a voice that reminds you in several languages that “this is an air-conditioned car”. This is a terrible lie and people here have fallen for it.
Did the trains run on time? Yes, but only if they ran at all, and that was not a given.
One day I got to Gare de Lyon and it was closed. Like a corner shop at Christmas. The weather wasn’t that good anymore or anything. No work today.
This was another opportunity to observe the Parisian lifestyle. Back home, it would be a big deal if thousands of people canceled or delayed their trip at once. Not here. They are used to it. Most arrived with luggage in tow, took in the situation, made a call and left. There was no point in arguing.
I guess this is why Paris got stuck with the Olympics in the first place.
Once you’ve done a few of these things, you notice how they get shakier each time. The organizers use environmentalism as an excuse and stop making sure everything is top notch. Now it’s middle class.
The venues look incredible on TV, but when you go behind the scenes, it’s far from over. The Olympic Games are a mobile film set.
It’s designed for one person – you, sitting at home thinking about how great it would be to go to the Olympics because everything looks incredible on TV.
Would I recommend it? Without reservation. If you have the means and the inclination, you should do it.
A stadium tour is all well and good, but no two stadiums are the same. Go to the Olympics. Nothing compares.
Don’t book anything years in advance. That’s when the scammers are still confident. Wait until six months in advance. If you have the steel, six weeks in advance. Then you can get something reasonable.
Don’t worry about the stories about what a disaster it will be. They are all disasters before they happen. And once they happen, everything will be OK.
As long as you don’t expect to get into the men’s gold medal basketball game, you’ll find tickets. Try something new. My favorite viewing experience in Paris was the weightlifting. That’s two hours of pure, escalating drama.
But when you go, you have to have the right goals in mind. This isn’t about sports. You’re not here to see winners. You’re here to see people having the best day of their lives or the worst day of their lives. Sometimes both at the same time. There’s no such thing at a baseball game.
When people cry here – and they cry all the time – they are probably neither tears of joy nor tears of sadness (although the athletes say so). They are the result of being completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of what life can sometimes be.
Yesterday you were in a gym in Nanaimo or Trois-Rivières or Sussex. Today you are in Paris writing the first line of your obituary. I would cry too.
These kinds of feelings are contagious. When you’re here, you’re susceptible to them. A colleague – a real reporter’s reporter – was constantly bursting into tears at all kinds of sporting events that none of us really understood.
It’s not the sport. It’s the people. You don’t have to know them or understand what they do. You just have to get involved and feel it.
While I would rather spend my free time vacationing in a gulag than traveling to sporting events, I can 100% guarantee that you will have a life-changing experience at the Olympics. Like Jorge Luis Borges or Pink Floyd, it’s as close to tapping into the main source as you can get. Once again, the Games have raised that bar high.
So goodbye, Paris. You didn’t save the Olympics because they don’t need saving. What you did was give them new confidence, simply by being your ice-cold self.
