Adventures in Olympic Park

Going to the Olympic Park in London is a little bit like entering another reality. It reminded me of Disneyworld in that everywhere I looked everything was London 2012 - the food, the signs, the people dressed head to toe in London 2012 gear. Even the flowers were sculpted in the colours and design of London 2012. Brand name bliss in East London...

There were staff members literally every few feet directing people which way to go. This is not an exaggeration. I would like to see someone try to approach the ticket booth without having their tickets ready for inspection. We were informed at one point that we were unfortunately standing in a non-standing area and if we wished to stand we should join the others in the standing area, which was a small circle of fenced-off area that very strongly resembled a pen.

Please do not think that I did not love Olympic Park, because I did love it, in the way that a child loves Disneyworld, because it is magical and fantastic. I also now love Coke, Adidas, Parasonic and Field Hockey. It was nice just to be in the middle of thousands of people (in our venue alone) who were there to have a good time and cheer on their country whether they were winning or losing.

It was neat to see the spectacle and enormity of the summer Olympics, which I did not truly appreciate until I was part of the sea of people streaming through the gates of the Park from the tube station. I often forget that London is a city of 7 million people and the Olympic Park is its own city within London for these few weeks out of the year. I will not be one of those Olympic fanatics who goes all out but I am definitely in the spirit of bringing countries together and people supporting their nations win or lose. We watched two matches of women's Field Hockey - USA vs Argentia and Australia vs Germany. The Aussies were definitely the loudest. Being amongst so many Europeans has definitely increased my own level of national pride, which is something that I feel is not celebrated often enough in Canada.

I cannot help but be impressed by the magnitude of the whole thing and all that has been accomplished to bring the Games here. I also cannot help but think that if all these countries can come together to support each other and sponsor their athletes and find funding and housing and build stadiums to such an enormous degree then surely they can put the same kind of considerable resources to bettering the world not just in terms of sports. But that is a larger question of its own which I won't get into right now. After all, I'm still on my Olympic high.

I also have a strange craving for a McFlurry...