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Staying In Sochi Is A Hilarious Adventure in the ass.

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Milamber

Member
They don't need more bedsheets ruined.

Ky4J1Wq.gif
 

watershed

Banned
Our hockey team had problems entering the main hockey arena - security did not let several staff members and players in and locker room was locked. So they had 5 minutes to unpack whole gear. And they even had problems getting out, because security locked them in....

meanwhile from our journalists
BftBA9zIYAADMG_.jpg

This is hilarious. They need to get the water fixed at minimum. You can't host thousands of people and not give them clean water.
 

industrian

will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
East Asian countries usually have a mini rinserthingie next to the toilet so you can clean with that, and just use the paper to dry off though... And this included all the places I stayed, and that ranges from 4 star hotels in Koh Samui, Thailand to bungalows on Koh Rong, Cambodia, where they didn't even have proper electricity.

You mean the small hose? I've only ever seen them in Thailand. And I thought it was just for cleaning the toilet. I've yet to come across them in Taiwan, Japan and Korea.
 

red731

Member
They don't need more bedsheets ruined.

I don't know about rest of the "mainland", but from where I am from, I have never seen no TP in toilet signs ever.
Also check for TP before taking a dump and save yourself a trouble - this is protip for everyplace in the world.

And for the winter games - damn, Russia doesn't mess around, right? Seriously surprised by some pictures and tweets.

Also it looks like they want to get the "good looking city" down, but aren't able to handle the little stuff.

edit: I was showing the no TP post to a colleague and he told me that his mother and sister were in Greece, and they had it written there - because the pipes were so thin - for the paper to go throug (otherwise pisswater everywhere).
 
Almost every room is missing something: lightbulbs, TVs, lamps, chairs, curtains, wifi, heat, hot water.

In the Ekaterininsky Kvartal hotel, the elevator is broken and the stairway is unlit, with stairs of varying and unpredictable heights.

Outside the Chistya Prudy, there is a bag of concrete in a palm tree, leaking grey down the trunk. Inside, some of the electrical outlets are just plates screwed into drywall.

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. Chris Stevenson of the Ottawa Sun was without electricity for the first day.

Yep, sounds like my country. Welcome to Russia.
 

i_am_ben

running_here_and_there
Russia seems like a fascinating country. If I wasn't gay I'd probably like to live there for a year.

Anyway, this doesn't seem any worse than the whole "the Greek Olympics won't be ready in time" thing.
 

GCX

Member
This stuff sounds genuinely awful. Did anything like this happen in London or Vancouver?
I think Beijing would be the best host city to compare this to but I don't think they had any problems like this. Being corrupted to the core results it.
 

SKINNER!

Banned


"Please remember, this is our snow. It is a treasure for us all, please, take care of it"

Yeah, forget basic clean water and safe facilities but our snow? Don't you dare fuck with that. We need it to host the Winter Olympics that we bought worked hard to win.
 

Novak

Member
I live in Croatia (so more central than eastern europe, but still ex communist country) and i never ever heard about no TP in toilet rule.

That said it seems so disgusting that i would refuse to stay in such room. Or i would say fuck it and flush it anyway
 
The Olympics shouldn't be held in third world countries.

Well in South Africa we managed to hold a pretty decent World Cup, vuvuzelas aside.

You can actually drink tap water in this country. And flush your TP down the toilet.

And these are the kind of places the teams were staying at:

http://conradhotels3.hilton.com/en/hotels/south-africa/conrad-pezula-GRJPRCI/index.html

http://www.irenecountrylodge.co.za/

If Sochi does turn out to be a fiasco, it would be interesting to know what the real reasons are.
 

Zaph

Member
This stuff sounds genuinely awful. Did anything like this happen in London or Vancouver?
Not even remotely close. Even the 2012 G4S security fuckup was quickly remedied by the army.

London and Vancouver are massive, established cities. When the landowner and construction contracts went out, they were snapped up immediately because the buildings had value regardless of the Olympics (e.g. London's Olympic Village was quickly repurposed as affordable housing a year later). With Sochi, most of these facilities and hotels are going to be empty and abandoned the moment the games end, so the only way to get them built is through handouts and corruption. It will never become the international tourist destination Putin wants.

People also forget the Winter Olympics is much smaller in scale compared to the Summer games. Far fewer athletes attend and you only need a fraction of the stadiums and facilities. For Russia to spend so much on so little, with such poor results, is mind boggling.
 

Fritz

Member
I live in Croatia (so more central than eastern europe, but still ex communist country) and i never ever heard about no TP in toilet rule.

That said it seems so disgusting that i would refuse to stay in such room. Or i would say fuck it and flush it anyway

I've seen this in many Countries incl Spain and Israel. It's just that in some old cities the pipes are to thin. Has nothing to do with communism. More with the last update of the sewer system.
 
Christ I hope their security is of a higher standard.

It's a massive target for Chechen terrorists, haven't there already been kidnapping threats against some of the atheletes?
 

shira

Member
Not even remotely close. Even the 2012 G4S security fuckup was quickly remedied by the army.

London and Vancouver are massive, established cities. When the landowner and construction contracts went out, they were snapped up immediately because the buildings had value regardless of the Olympics (e.g. London's Olympic Village was quickly repurposed as affordable housing a year later). With Sochi, most of these facilities and hotels are going to be empty and abandoned the moment the games end, so the only way to get them built is through handouts and corruption. It will never become the international tourist destination Putin wants.

People also forget the Winter Olympics is much smaller in scale compared to the Summer games. Far fewer athletes attend and you only need a fraction of the stadiums and facilities. For Russia to spend so much on so little, with such poor results, is mind boggling.
lol wikipedia
The Russian Government provided nearly 327 billion roubles (about US$10 billion) for the total development, expansion and hosting of the Games.[citation needed] 192 billion roubles coming from the federal budget and 7 billion roubles from the Krasnodar Krai budget and from the Sochi budget. The organizers expect to have a surplus of US$300 million when the Games conclude.
Financing from non-budget sources (including private investor funds) is distributed as follows:[10]
Tourist infrastructure: $2.6 billion
Olympic venues: $500 million
Transport infrastructure: $270 million
Power supply infrastructure: $100 million
 
The reasons are well laid out in this doc:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H59qzY_8XbM

Can't watch that now, but I'm guessing then mismanagement and some corruption at the highest level. As long as the actual sporting facilities and tracks and courses are decent, the Games should still be ok, though.

I don't think we should be laughing or trying to ridicule the entire Russia because of this, though. One or two of the posts here are a bit questionable. But I guess it's the perfect storm because of the gay laws stuff and Russia's general opposition to American/UK foreign policy, so a lot of people are really ready to hate on them.
 

Zaph

Member
lol wikipedia
The Russian Government provided nearly 327 billion roubles (about US$10 billion) for the total development, expansion and hosting of the Games.[citation needed] 192 billion roubles coming from the federal budget and 7 billion roubles from the Krasnodar Krai budget and from the Sochi budget. The organizers expect to have a surplus of US$300 million when the Games conclude.
Financing from non-budget sources (including private investor funds) is distributed as follows:[10]
Tourist infrastructure: $2.6 billion
Olympic venues: $500 million
Transport infrastructure: $270 million
Power supply infrastructure: $100 million
Yeah, that's nice, but probably not so smart to copy/paste Wikipedia for on-going, complex issues and definitely not for uncited figures. Especially ones that involve as much corruption as this.

Have a little read about how those low Wikipedia numbers came about.

One of my favourite quotes:
Dmitry Kozak, deputy prime minister in charge of Olympic preparations, has argued that the $51 billion number is misleading. Only $6 billion of that is directly Olympics-related, he says; the rest has gone to infrastructure and regional development the state would have carried out anyway. That may be true, though it’s hard to imagine the Russian government building an $8.7 billion road and railway up to the mountains without the Games.
 
Christ I hope their security is of a higher standard.

It's a massive target for Chechen terrorists, haven't there already been kidnapping threats against some of the atheletes?

Apparently the security is super Draconian and handled by the Russian military.
Basically Sochi is going to be like a prison camp.
 

Nicktendo86

Member
Just to wade into the toilet paper discussion, been to Greece and Turkey and they both had the no paper down the toilet rule. I can't remember if Egypt did when we whent, but they did have one of those mini fountain things on the floor to 'clean' yourself with.

Anyways, yeah this doesn't look good. Everything has been done so last minute and cheaply the bribery is so obvious.
 

shira

Member
Yeah, that's nice, but probably not so smart to copy/paste Wikipedia for on-going, complex issues and definitely not for uncited figures. Especially ones that involve as much corruption as this.

Have a little read about how those low Wikipedia numbers came about.

One of my favourite quotes:

51 bill, woooooooooooooo
 

Jackpot

Banned
Wow, ITT I learned that in some countries its common to throw toilet paper in the actual toilet. Wtf. Here (Brazil) we are thought not to do so since we are really young. :lol Thats so weird.

How does it make sense to keep a bin full of paper covered in shit in every toilet? There's a reason why toilets and sinks have a U-bend.
 

Porcile

Member
OMG the wrong way round toilet seat in that Twitter feed. Someone hold me please, I've never seen anything as hilariously shambolic.

Bfn_kqgIIAAC5mn.jpg
 

watershed

Banned
This is great:

Another newcomer, a German photographer arrived to find his media hotel room unfinished. He was moved to a second room — where still-busy construction workers had taken up residence.

His third room was occupied — by a stray dog.

“When I came out of the elevator, there was the dog,” recalled Joerg Reuter of the European Pressphoto Agency. “I said, ‘Right, that’s it.’ ”
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/o...chiproblems-olympic-village-article-1.1602530
 

Zomba13

Member
OMG the wrong way round toilet seat in that Twitter feed. Someone hold me please, I've never seen anything as hilariously shambolic.

Bfn_kqgIIAAC5mn.jpg

I don't understand how that can happen. Did the person installing it never see a toilet before? Are toilets that different in Russia?
 
How does it make sense to keep a bin full of paper covered in shit in every toilet? There's a reason why toilets and sinks have a U-bend.

That's definitely the worst for me. Would never be able to go in a toilet that has someone else's dirty paper in a bin next to it. The horror, the horror...
 
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