The Olympics Outside the Games

One of my biggest discoveries about being in Paris during the Olympics is that I’m enjoying them.

That might sound facetious, so let me explain.

Before the games began in earnest, I, like pretty much everyone else in France, was not looking forward to them. Almost everyone around me was dead certain that they were going to be a train wreck; that the money was being wasted, that the public transport system would be overcrowded, and that the city would be hell on earth.

It didn’t help matters either that landlords were seeing euro signs. Someone I know was unceremoniously forced out of his apartment when his landlord suddenly announced that a family member needed it in July and August — the two months during which the Olympics would just so happen to be taking place.

After years of disruptions in the city and below it, there was an overwhelming sense that all these public funds were being lavished upon an event that only a tiny elite would benefit from. So if locals could be accused of being cynical about the whole event, their cynicism wasn’t without merit.

Given the fraught atmosphere, it came then as no surprise to see Parisians heading for the hills…