Some things in life are decided for us by Obviousness, the obese uncle of Karma and Lady Luck who talks the loudest and is always the first one in line at the buffet of choice. When Obviousness picked up his plate and looked at the plethora of options with large eyes, who else would get chosen to go on the Olympic trip with me but a friend whose nickname is pronounced as “bear”.
Bear and I arrived at the airport early morning. Neither of us really knew what to expect from the trip, since very little information was provided. Waiting at the desk were Jacques Rogge – president of the International Olympic Committee, Dominique Monami – Olympic bronze medallist in women doubles tennis, and a group of thirty C-level men and women representing the main sponsors of the Belgian Olympic team. Having such high-class travel companions made for some very interesting conversation, especially when making introductions. Although “interesting” is probably not the word they would use to describe it. Let me give you an example:
“Hi, pleased to meet you. My name is Toon, this is Bear.”
“Hi, likewise. I’m Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC since five years. What do you do, Toon?” Jacques said, shaking my hand.
“Oh, I’m a student. I’m here because I rode a polar bear down a mountain on a wooden sled really fast.”
Bear would point his thumb at me and say: “Yeah, I’m with him.”
This was usually followed up with a blank stare, some shakes of the head, a mouth opening and closing, and some polite coughing. When lucky, we’d get a “what?”, but at this point the conversation tended to die such an agonizingly slow death that it had worms nibbling its toes long before it was in the grave.
Luckily the city of Turin gave us some distraction and conversation material. Walking through the streets of Turin felt like walking on a movie set.
The city’s buildings are a beautiful light brown with richly decorated facades, contrasted with black barred balconies and red tiled roofs, against a background of snowy mountains outside of the city.
One of the city’s famous buildings is the Palazzo Barolo, the museum that is part of the Opera Barolo and the cafeteria for our Olympic day. Our lunch location in the Palazzo was the Salone; a room completely decorated with gold leaf, bombastic paintings and frescoes covering the ceiling.
Matching the fanciness level of the room was a four course lunch with assorted wines and champagnes.
Did you know that culinary decadence can be measured as the ratio “volume of glassware on a table to the surface area of said table”? Or in formula form 
?
is measured in m³ and 
is measured in m², so that 
is a length that represents the distance that the stick is up someone’s ass.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, our evening program. For your entertainment, our spectacle “polar bears on ice”, commonly referred to as the figure skating long program. In the lead roles today:
- Belgian polar bear Kevin Van Der Perren, performing on the soundtrack of Pirates of the Caribbean, sponsored by uncle Obviousness, and good for an 8th place.
- Russian polar bear Evgeni Plushenko, performing on the soundtrack of The Godfather, sponsored by Tom Jones, and good for a gold medal.
- Hungarian polar bear Zoltán Tóth, performing on the soundtrack of Kill Bill, sponsored by Zax’s bruise cream, unfortunately not so good because 24th and last, and in a horizontal position more than the intended vertical one.
- A cliché number of dreambears darting like Disney princesses.
Enjoy the show!
Official warning: please keep all flag waving to a minimum until your country is assured of victory. First aid kits, marked as “alcohol”, are spread across the stadium for you convenience, in case of premature twirlation. The organization cannot be held liable for polar bear casualties, conversation fatalities and coin toss causalities.