Olympia

It's that time of once-every-four-years again!  Olympics time!  Compared to the way we celebrated the month leading up to the Euro Cup in May, the Olympics is a pretty big let down here in Germany. In May, there were people thronging the streets in the jerseys as the rival European nations battled it out on the soccer field.  In the last two weeks, I haven't seen so much as a red, gold and black sweatshirt.

Maybe that's because Germany hasn't lived up to its potential this Olympic Games.  There has been no bigger let down for the Germans, according to the smug ex-handball stars that pass for television commentators in this day and age, than the national swim team.  Apparently Germans consider themselves to be very good at swimming.  I'm afraid that the rest of us would have to admit we've been more struck by the Phelpses and Lochtes of this world than the Biedermanns and Steffens, but for Germany, the hopes of a nation rested on this year's swim team.  And on the fencing team.  And on the judo team.  And don't forget the noble sport of ping pong.

But only the swim team failed to deliver.  Now, for a country like Canada, a less than stellar showing would be cause for a few halfhearted smiles and a long talk about the power of the Olympic spirit.  German sports commentators take a very different approach.  No montages of Olympic disappointments or downed athletes being comforted by their teammates for this television station, only could hard truth.  Nobody bore the brunt of this more than the swim team.  As the days went by without medals, and without even qualifying to be in the finals, the comments turned uglier and uglier.  Why is she smiling? they asked as an Olympic hopeful put on a brave face after failing to beat the best.  He should not be content just to sit by and watch! That I cannot understand! they blustered after another young German star, dripping wet and out of breath from sprinting underwater alongside the world's best Olympian ever, dejectedly claimed he was looking forward to cheering on his teammates in the next round - a round in which he would not be swimming.

Each day the German team poolside looked sadder and sadder.  Finally there was no more cheering, no more waving, no more smiling at the camera.  The faces of losers, intoned the commentator, showing a snap of a demoralized swimming team  checking their Facebook from their phones poolside, what went wrong? When the German swim coach came on with his tail between his legs and claimed that the swimmers were not conditioning hard enough and that they had gained bad habits early in their careers that no amount of training could break, it was all I could do to keep the television on.  Thank goodness I persevered, because I would have hated to miss seeing Michael Phelps breeze to gold for the umpteenth time.

But it's time to lighten up and think about what it means to be an Olympian.  These are the best of the best.  Each Olympic sport should have an extra lane for a normal fit person competitor, maybe a gym bunny or that friend of yours who has way too many photos of himself in a tank top, to run or swim or jump through hurdles in the middle of puddles alongside the Olympic athletes.  As he or she thrashed and stumbled along a half hour behind the athletes, those watching would realize once and for all how amazingly honed the skills of Olympians are.  I would like to volunteer the German sports commentators as the first normal fit people to hit the locker rooms and kickstart this new program, handball heroes or otherwise.

Garmisch-Partenkirchen

 Dear Olympic Committee, Munich wants to try again, and this time it promises there will be no screw ups.  In its bid for the 2018 Winter Games, Munich has teamed up once again with Garmisch-Partenkirchen (a partnership that brought you such memorable events as the 1936 Olympics) with the best intentions of rewriting history, but has made the unfortunate mistake of settling on the slogan the Friendly Games.  As the city museum reminded us, Munich's last shot at redemption, the 1972 Olympics, took a page out of the same PR thesaurus and called itself the Happy Games.  You may remember what happened that time. If not, Steven Spielberg does.
    Poor marketing aside, Garmisch-Partenkirchen was a very nice resort, with a lot more going for it than Munich.  Munich was full of tourists and historic buildings under construction.  Garmisch-Partenkirchen may have had the tourists and outspokenly Anglo-hating Bavarians, but it also had the Alps.  No one would dare cover the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain, with one of those cloth awnings that reproduce the original facade of the heavily scaffolded building underneath and claim it was basically the same experience.  We also didn't have to deal with the world's most annoying English speakers turned bicycle tour guides once we headed deep into the Alpine woods.
  Sadly, judging from the treatment we received in one of the guesthouses we stopped at for a drink on our hike up one of the surrounding mountains (which started with a trail hacked through an extremely narrow gorge carved by a very close, very roaring stream), just because we didn't encounter any off-duty tour guides that weekend does not mean that said annoying Anglos have not already made it to Garmisch-Partenkirchen and ruined the reputation of English speakers everywhere.  Even German-speaking English speakers.  We got the slowest service, the wrong drinks, and general non-responsiveness to any and all requests (including to pay).  On the plus side, we got cold drinks on a patio after hiking halfway up a mountain.  Definitely not a complete loss.