Journalists at Sochi are live-tweeting their hotel experiences

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/02/04/journalists-at-sochi-are-live-tweeting-their-hilarious-and-gross-hotel-experiences/

by danso • 12 years ago

93 47 12 years ago

washingtonpost.com

MichaelApproved3• 12 years ago

What's more frustrating than your government overspending money on corrupt construction? Not even getting what you paid for. Construction and preparation costs were in the billions. Much of the money was given to Putin's associates and, in return, the people get this trash.

Same goes for Obama with Healthcare.gov. We spent all that money and got garbage in return.

phillmv3• 12 years ago

Well, healthcare.org was an incompetent contractor. It wasn't corrupt.

pdeuchler• 12 years ago

By definition it's corruption. This is hundreds of millions of dollars here, either nobody did the due diligence, the procurement committee (or however they chose it) was mislead, or the contractor was chosen for other reasons than their competency. Pick your poison, but it's all corrupt.

Edit: it's late and what is grammar

CoachRufus87• 12 years ago

How does an incompetent contractor win a contract without some corruption?

Spooky233• 12 years ago

It was grossly negligent at best.

The lack of contractural provisions requiring the contractors perform to get paid displays a level of incompetence that suggests corruption.

The real issue was probably an insane deadline that required a "fast" procurement vehicle. I consider that systemically corruption.

prostoalex2• 12 years ago

So corrupt contractors (a) pocket the money, (b) under-deliver the results. What do incompetent ones do?

pfarrell• 12 years ago

American bureaucracy doesn't have the ability to deliver state level websites/applications. It will take several iterations for such a huge federal website with so many competing interests to take shape. /naive but hopeful

10feet• 12 years ago

Every single olympics, there is dire warnings before hand, things will not be ready. There are guaranteed huge traffic problems, not enough volunteers or infrastructure.

Then as soon as it starts, all is forgotten, it is a wonderful time, the best Olympics ever, greatest world records broken, the best Olympians ever.

pedalpete2• 12 years ago

You hear the run up of 'they aren't going to be ready', but you don't hear it days before the Olympics. In Whistler/Vancouver, our housing was completed months before. You didn't have incomplete buildings or event venues leading up to the day. Some of the venues may have cut it close (I don't really remember), but still, I don't think anything was left to a few days before.

I really don't care about the journalists though. I'm more concerned about the athletes and the venues, particularly for their safety in many of these sports where (by the sounds of things) the competition will be essentially a 'trial run' of the venue. In Whistler, our Bobsled and Nordic Ski venues all hosted warm-up test events before the Olympics.

bri3d2• 12 years ago

The venue issue is already present: http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-03/why-extreme-nature-soc... .

The main issue illustrated by this story is that the warm weather in Sochi is causing many of the venues to be built sloppily or incorrectly. In this case the slopestyle venue was difficult to build because of poor snow quality and the jumps are all massively overbuilt to try to compensate for high expected melting rates over the coming week.

whbk2• 12 years ago

This one's a little different. Yeah every Olympics has this fear-mongering, but we're three days, not months (as is typically the case), from opening ceremonies. There was talk today that some event venues aren't even set up, when the games begin in 2 days.

whatusername• 12 years ago

This was two weeks out from the last Commonwealth Games. Familiar story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11379020

Or this one: http://www.smh.com.au/commonwealth-games-2010/comm-games-new... (although that was during the games fixing damage from the Opening Ceremony)

Oculus• 12 years ago

I knew corruption surrounding the games was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad. What happens if they're not prepared? Do they just go "Sorry, no xyz sport because the venue isn't ready"?

xentronium2• 12 years ago

Hopefully, all the olympic venues are ready.

Still, underdelivery and enormous costs of these olympics (~$20-50bn figures depending on what to include in olympic costs) are horrifying for us Russians even more than yellow rusty water is for europeans and americans.

If past experience is any indicator, whatever is built for the Games will decay and rot within months after the event.

kubiiii• 12 years ago

In France, since the Albertville olympic games (1992), the local ski venues are much more accessible (thanks to tunnels), and you still can use the bobsleigh track. So it really depends if the infrastructures were thought only for the olympic games or with a broader view.

tomasien• 12 years ago

This seems way different than the usual "everything is going to be terrible" months out stuff we usually see. This is "the games start tomorrow and the HOTELS aren't actually finished".

tinbad2• 12 years ago

For someone who grew up in Russia this doesn't come as a surprise at all. This is how it is when the whole world is watching, one can only imagine what everyday life is like in Russia. I remember the stories of how back in the 1980 Olympics the, normally completely empty, grocery stores in Moscow were all of a sudden filled with 'luxury' food items imported from Finland to show the rest of the world how great the country was. Meanwhile Moscow was a complete lockdown and nobody could get in or out of the city. Deja vu all over again ;)

larrys• 12 years ago

Can you confirm whether the russian in the "please don't flush toilet paper" is correctly translated?

Seems to be more likely that they actually mean "paper" or "paper towels" not "toilet paper".

It is quite common to not want anything but toilet paper flushed so I'm wondering if that is what the sign actually is meaning to say.

rch• 12 years ago

There are plenty of places around the world that have septic systems not designed to handle toilet paper. The sign is probably accurate.

gkoberger• 12 years ago

Having recently traveled abroad, I can confirm that a lot of hotels in areas with bad septic won't even let you flush toilet paper.

tinbad2• 12 years ago

Just went back to read it again. I must say it is quiet confusing, it says literally 'please don't throw paper in the toilet'. It doesn't specify what paper so it could be interpreted differently indeed.

oddx3• 12 years ago

In russian it simple "paper", not "toilet paper" [1]

[1] http://translate.google.com/#ru/en/%D0%A3%D0%B1%D0%B5%D0%B4%....

imissmyjuno• 12 years ago

it is toilet paper for certain. source: russian speaker.

erikj• 12 years ago

It says "Please don't flush paper". Not toilet paper, not paper towels - just paper.

uloweb• 12 years ago

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070604222148AA...

xentronium2• 12 years ago

It does say "paper", not "toilet paper" in Russian, but most certainly they do mean toilet paper.

Bins for toilet paper used to be quite common in old buildings with bad plumbing. Also, historically, toilet paper used to be in great deficit in USSR, so torn newspapers were used for that purpose instead, causing all kind of clogs.

prostoalex2• 12 years ago

That is actually quite common in Russia and not necessarily Sochi-specific. The sewage system is in consistent state of mild disrepair, and it's common for bathrooms in hotels, conference centers and restaurants to have foul-smelling bins for used toilet paper.

oddx3• 12 years ago

As of "do not flush toilet paper", I have seen such signs in many places around the world (but I don't know reasons behind it), and it isn't only my experience [1]. It's intresting that it was a new for journalist who travels a lot.

[1] http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/20967/how-to-deal-...

eigenvector• 12 years ago

Yeah, I know this is disappointing for a global sporting event, but I'm surprised experienced journos have not experienced stuff like this in other developing countries (e.g. India).

eropple• 12 years ago

Most of the journalists that I've been seeing this stuff from are sports journalists. Very heavily biased towards the United States and Canada.

bane• 12 years ago

I haven't been to Russia since the 90s, but this sounds pretty par for the course for back then: undrinkable water, crumbling new construction, Stray dogs,etc. I'm a bit surprised it's still that bad. It's a shame since it's a beautiful country with some really warm people.

Also, really surprised seasoned journalists have never been to a country where you can't flush the toilet paper?

Journalists at Sochi are live-tweeting their hotel experiences

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