4 February 2014
Washington Post’s Moscow correspondent Kathy Lally, who is now in Sochi, describes the situation in this Russian-occupied Emirate city in a report entitled "Olympic dream in Sochi: Internet in the hotel".
Putin is counting off the final days until the opening ceremonies of the games on Friday, and that’s probably time enough to get the Internet working in the hotels.
But getting grass to grow? Perhaps not. There’s so much goopy earth everywhere, it could be time to call out the Olympic mud wrestlers. Finding homes for the packs of hungry stray dogs? That would get at the spirit of the games.
Putin and his deputies here have repeatedly promised that every detail will have fallen into perfect place. No doubt that includes hopes of rooms finished in time to house every spectator who has already paid for one, lamps at every bedside table (many are still undelivered) and bulbs for those already in place (not yet).
As every Russian is fond of saying, hope dies last.
From the air at night, everything looks ready. The Olympic coastal cluster glows hospitably. Lights gleam in the hotel windows.
Check into one of the media hotels, and thank goodness the fire hoses are in place. Open the white cabinet in the bathroom, a miniature hose lies curled inside, ready to extinguish the threat of a bathroom blaze.
There’s also a sink — a tiny, tiny sink — big enough to wash your hands unless they’re particularly meaty. The little sink sits atop an exposed white plastic pipe, stuck to the wall and surrounded by an unruly gob of caulk. Might as well forget about a shower curtain. The way the bathroom is set up there’s no place to affix a rod.
The single room has two lamps — which don’t have light bulbs, but that’s okay because they aren’t near any unused outlets.
An overhead chandelier has five shades, three of them with bulbs. There’s no phone. The television doesn’t work. A brainstorm interrupts an unsuccessful effort to plod through the manual — in Russian. There’s no battery in the remote!
Still no luck. Turns out the TV needs Internet to operate. Any moment, a manager assures, and WiFi will be available — at least in the lobby. The rooms have their own fuse boxes, where some kind of meter runs inside, raising fears they’re going to charge extra for electricity.
Most of the construction equipment has been cleared away, and the landscapers have moved in with trees and shrubs, stuck here and there among clods of earth, pools of rainwater and the mud. The turf men are nowhere to be seen, and the soil hardly seems prepared for them.
Debris-filled dumpsters still sit near some of the hotels. Men carry boxes in and out of the buildings late at night. In the morning, other men with brushes and cans of white paint stand in the rain, dabbing at the sides of hotels.
Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center
Source: Kavkaz Center.
Link: http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2014/02/04/18838.shtml.
Washington Post’s Moscow correspondent Kathy Lally, who is now in Sochi, describes the situation in this Russian-occupied Emirate city in a report entitled "Olympic dream in Sochi: Internet in the hotel".
Putin is counting off the final days until the opening ceremonies of the games on Friday, and that’s probably time enough to get the Internet working in the hotels.
But getting grass to grow? Perhaps not. There’s so much goopy earth everywhere, it could be time to call out the Olympic mud wrestlers. Finding homes for the packs of hungry stray dogs? That would get at the spirit of the games.
Putin and his deputies here have repeatedly promised that every detail will have fallen into perfect place. No doubt that includes hopes of rooms finished in time to house every spectator who has already paid for one, lamps at every bedside table (many are still undelivered) and bulbs for those already in place (not yet).
As every Russian is fond of saying, hope dies last.
From the air at night, everything looks ready. The Olympic coastal cluster glows hospitably. Lights gleam in the hotel windows.
Check into one of the media hotels, and thank goodness the fire hoses are in place. Open the white cabinet in the bathroom, a miniature hose lies curled inside, ready to extinguish the threat of a bathroom blaze.
There’s also a sink — a tiny, tiny sink — big enough to wash your hands unless they’re particularly meaty. The little sink sits atop an exposed white plastic pipe, stuck to the wall and surrounded by an unruly gob of caulk. Might as well forget about a shower curtain. The way the bathroom is set up there’s no place to affix a rod.
The single room has two lamps — which don’t have light bulbs, but that’s okay because they aren’t near any unused outlets.
An overhead chandelier has five shades, three of them with bulbs. There’s no phone. The television doesn’t work. A brainstorm interrupts an unsuccessful effort to plod through the manual — in Russian. There’s no battery in the remote!
Still no luck. Turns out the TV needs Internet to operate. Any moment, a manager assures, and WiFi will be available — at least in the lobby. The rooms have their own fuse boxes, where some kind of meter runs inside, raising fears they’re going to charge extra for electricity.
Most of the construction equipment has been cleared away, and the landscapers have moved in with trees and shrubs, stuck here and there among clods of earth, pools of rainwater and the mud. The turf men are nowhere to be seen, and the soil hardly seems prepared for them.
Debris-filled dumpsters still sit near some of the hotels. Men carry boxes in and out of the buildings late at night. In the morning, other men with brushes and cans of white paint stand in the rain, dabbing at the sides of hotels.
Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center
Source: Kavkaz Center.
Link: http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2014/02/04/18838.shtml.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.