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I just watched the mayor of Sochi at the closing ceremony of Vancouver 2010 Olympics, together with his orchestra, Moscow choir, Kirov and Bolshoi ballet groups and the wonderful array of periodic costumes. I'm getting the same idea.
I have been to Sochi. It's sort of Russia's reeaaally out-of-the-way version of Monte Carlo. Pretty enough place, a very small very exclusive enclave of the Russian rich. Putin and Mededev had the town closed a couple of weeks ago so they could ski.
Sochi (currently) has virtually no tourist infrastructure. There are a couple of big fancy hotels and casinos, a few restaurants. That's it.
If I were you I would be very tentative about putting the Sochi winter Olympics on your travel calendar. The Russians have made a lot of big promises and I am not confident those promises can be fulfilled. In the general area of Sochi, including the nearby town of Adler where the *airport* is located, there is currently.....not much of anything. They have four years to make a silk purse out of a sows ear. It will require a miracle.
Another serious problem to consider is the Russian visa regime. Right now it's like pulling teeth--and very expensive ones at that--to get a Russian visa. There is really no telling how the Russian will propose to solve the visa problems in order to let in thousands of foreigners. I can't imagine them letting go of their draconian visa requirements, but they will have to do something very different from what they're doing now if they expect to admit an Olympics full of foreign tourists.
It may be instructive to observe some of the fiascos in Beijing. The Chinese spent years and billions of dollars preparing for the last summer Olympics. They literally razed Beijing and rebuilt the entire city, including kazillions of splenderous hotels (mind you, the Chinese are much more energetic and goal oriented than the Russians, and have 100 times the labor force). They sold Olympic tickets galore to foreigners. Then when game time rolled around.....they refused to issue visas to ticket holding foreigners. Turned them down by the thousands. It was so dire they bused in Chinese people from near and far to fill up their half empty stadiums for the events.
Although I surely hope the Russians will be able to pull off the miracles necessary for 2014....I'm not optimistic.
Well, I suppose the good news is that it's four years away, so if things don't look good by then, we'll spend our three weeks somewhere else But we're really excited about hitting an Olympics and unfortunately Vancouver came a bit too soon!
I'm nervous about the Olympics in Sochi. I'm from Ukraine and a lot of my friends went to Sochi at some point in their lives. It will really take a lot of work and a miracle for them to pull off a successful event of this proportion. Sochi is a small town and how about the climate? I never realized Sochi would be a good place for WINTER OLYMPICS.
It's by the black sea and it's pretty warm there in the summer. I mean, not like tropical, but it's a humid subtropical climate and definitely warmer then up north in Canada for example. The average temperature for February is 50 degrees Farhenheit.
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The state-controlled RAO UES announced in July 2007 that it might spend 30 billion roubles (about US$1.2billion) on upgrading the electrical power system in the Sochi area by 2014.[22] The power generating companies Inter RAO UES and RusHydro would have to build or modernize four thermal power plants and four hydroelectric plants — and the federal grid company FGC UES has to replace the Central-Shepsi electricity transmission line, which reportedly often fails in bad weather
I'm nervous about the Olympics in Sochi. I'm from Ukraine and a lot of my friends went to Sochi at some point in their lives. It will really take a lot of work and a miracle for them to pull off a successful event of this proportion. Sochi is a small town and how about the climate? I never realized Sochi would be a good place for WINTER OLYMPICS.
It's by the black sea and it's pretty warm there in the summer. I mean, not like tropical, but it's a humid subtropical climate and definitely warmer then up north in Canada for example. The average temperature for February is 50 degrees Farhenheit.
Yeah the warmer weather can wreak real havoc with the Winter Olympics!! For the Calgary Olympics in 1988, Calgary got hit with a chinook and it was pretty darn balmy for the events that were held outside!!! Everything was brown . . . they had a heck of a time with the snow that year!
Sadly, the Olympic bid is being used as a way for construction companies simply to get their hands on the most valuable land," Greenpeace Russia’s Mikhail Kreindlin said. "The last time the Russian government looked at this issue, which was in January, 2007 they made no mention of the Olympic bid. They simply said that the land could be used for social infrastructure, whereas it was patently obvious that it would be snapped up by elite resorts and golf clubs [with] nothing to do with the Olympics."[15] Putin had apparently chided construction firms working round-the-clock to get Sochi up to ready, t
There are so many places in Russia that have a climate that supports Winter Olympics. I mean, hello, it's Russia. Out of all places, this is what they chose.
It may be instructive to observe some of the fiascos in Beijing. The Chinese spent years and billions of dollars preparing for the last summer Olympics. They literally razed Beijing and rebuilt the entire city, including kazillions of splenderous hotels (mind you, the Chinese are much more energetic and goal oriented than the Russians, and have 100 times the labor force). They sold Olympic tickets galore to foreigners. Then when game time rolled around.....they refused to issue visas to ticket holding foreigners. Turned them down by the thousands. It was so dire they bused in Chinese people from near and far to fill up their half empty stadiums for the events.
Although I surely hope the Russians will be able to pull off the miracles necessary for 2014....I'm not optimistic.
i think the russians can pull it off. winter olympics are smaller in scale than summer ones - e.g. participating nations, visitors, etc.
LOL after reading up on it, they're proposing "railcar hotels"... I hope that doesn't mean those tiny train beds?
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But we're really excited about hitting an Olympics and unfortunately Vancouver came a bit too soon!
