It was a spontaneous idea to actually visit Paris in France for the Olympic Games. I was always dreaming of visiting it one day and to watch it live. The tickets at the first draft were way too expensive, but shortly before the games there were many cheaper tickets available.
I bought myself Marla 6 Handball and 2 Water Polo tickets.
Getting to Paris
It was on a Friday, we were working normally and after work the journey started.
We were picking up 2 people from Blablacar and were starting to drive in the direction of Paris. The one guy in the car wanted to go even further and had his ride waiting for him in Paris. The girl was just about to visit her boyfriend nearby Hamburg. After we dropped her off, the car was full. One guy from Tunisia, who had to catch his flight the next day and one guy who wanted to visit his girlfriend in Paris.
It was crowded in the car, but everyone needed this ride, because the trains were not working.
We were a nice group, in which we had many topics to talk about, also a lot about traveling and surprisingly a lot about Colombia.
The way was very long, over 900 km. We were stopping once in Belgium, but went through because we were a bit late for the second ride of the one guy, due to traffic.
It was tough driving the 11 hours through, but it worked of course. Also I even made some profit, so I had to pay nothing for the fuel the whole way.
The place to stay
We arrived at 2 in the morning at the city and obviously I wasn’t getting us a charged place to stay in the city, the prices were skyrocketing!
My friend Alec was hosting us in his apartment in Paris for the whole time.
I met Alec on a Couchsurfing camping event and he wanted me the whole time to visit him in Paris.
The apartment was in a good location and adding to this, it was possible for me to have a parking spot for free! Can’t have it better.
It was great spending time with Alec again, he is a very interesting person and has seen and experienced a lot from this world.
My thoughts
I am not a big fan of France in general, but I really wanted to see the Olympic games, it was something I dreamed of as a kid, so I was pretty excited about going there. The Olympic games is for me something special, something which made me excited and something which just gave me a feeling that everyone is able to achieve something big. Sports of which nobody usually is hearing of are being seen. Heroes of the nations are getting born and nations have the chance of showing themselves and living peacefully together. This is something I really like about it.
My hometown Hamburg once wanted to host the games, but the people sadly voted against it.
The Olympic games over time were also very political and that is sad, but with a lot of money and power things like that obviously happen.
I know that there are a lot of understandable critics about the games, but I am a fan of it and it is a good thing to fulfill your dreams and not just see them as dreams without actually chasing them.
The time in Paris
Actually I was not taking vacation during my time in Paris, so I was actually doing some work, which wasn’t easy to do. During the Olympic Games in Paris, it wasn’t that crowded like usually.
We were very busy in the city, going to the games and also seeing something. Also the car ride and everything around it was taking a lot of energy from us.
I can only work until 20:00, at least I can only call clients until that time, so that was a bit problematic for me, but it still worked out somehow, which was good.
We were not seeing typical things in the city. We went for example to no museum, to no famous restaurant or sight in the city. It was just like walking around and going from the stadium to the fan zones. For me it was good, because it was the only thing I wanted to do in the city.
Organization
The sad thing actually was, that you couldn’t feel any hype of the games. The people didn’t seem to be very excited and it was just all in French. This is not that welcoming for people from all around the world.
The organization is honestly just bad, it is surprising how they can spend so much money, but won’t make anything amazing out of it.
At our first two Handball matches there was such a long queue, actually I’ve never seen such a long one. It was so unorganized and sad to see. Adding to this, the staff was just screaming everything in French and complained about why we didn’t follow the instructions, so stupid. Also the streets were often accessible on one side for authorized vehicles only. It was standing also only in French, which isn’t helping.
During normal days that is also totally fine, but not during a massive international event.
France is just a huge failure on this one, which is very sad.
Handball at the Olympic Games in Paris
Handball is my favorite sport, so I was very hyped about getting tickets for that sport. Germany also played one of the games which was just amazing!
Most of the people were Germans during that game and it didn’t feel like an away game!
It was great seeing these 6 games which often were quite close and amazing to watch.
Egypt against Denmark or Japan against Croatia.
On paper the best match would have been Spain against Sweden, but surprisingly it was the worst one we saw from the 6, maybe also because of being tired.
Most of the people were French people in general. The high amount of fans for their country was missing, just at the German game it wasn’t like that.
Water Polo
Water Polo is a crazy sport and people are getting very hyped, just like us. We were a bit late, due to bad overview of the plan. Also due to lazy security people with bad organization, like mentioned above. It is insane how incompetent the staff was, which was probably not their fault. Instead the fault was probably found at the organization of everything. They seemed like they didn’t spend much money on training for the staff, sad.
The atmosphere at the stadium was great, we watched Australia against Serbia and Italy against Croatia. Both were great games and then we had to rush a little bit, due to no affordable ride or something we decided to cycle back. This took over an hour in over 30 Celsius and was literally hell.
The Olympic Games in Paris bring a lot of issues with it, but it is still not to watch, at least for myself.
What is up next?
In the next personal blog article I will be writing a little bit about the trip and also how it finished, so stay tuned until next week.
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