According to the New York Times, if you want to have fun at the 2006 Winter Olympics, hang out with the Russians.
Outside the Russia House, headquarters for the Russian delegation in Turin, a horde of people gathered at the entryway, looking frozen and distraught.
“Please, I am Russian,” one woman in heavy mascara and skintight jeans pleaded to a security guard late Tuesday night.
But the guard, in his red Russian team jacket, did not budge. The red rope keeping the woman from the hottest party spot at the Turin Games did not fall away.
“Sorry, but everybody says they are Russian,” the security guard said before looking the other way.
The stodgy, gloomy Bolsheviks are gone—Mother Russia is back to her old self.
“We have the best parties because we made Russia House look like our motherland,” said Olga Yudkis, a spokeswoman for the Russian luxury clothing company Bosco di Ciliegi, which sponsors Russia House.
At those parties, which happen nightly, a Russian polka/rock band plays. Borscht is served from huge vats sitting on an outdoor fire. At several bars, vodka drinks are served, some with syrupy black currant juice, others with orange rinds that bartenders set afire before dropping them into a martini glass.
For years, the Russian and Soviet teams were considered the evil empire of the Olympics. Their athletes seemed mass-produced by the Soviet machine. They performed like robots. Their presence loomed.
Now they have turned into a fun-loving group that is a great host.
Anyone who had Russian friends during the Cold War won’t be surprised at this. How they managed to keep the temperature down on their end of the “battle” is beyond me. But the English language plays funny games, doesn’t it?
It’s just as the American figure skater Johnny Weir preached from the moment these Olympics began: no one is cooler than the Russians.
Earlier in the Times article, the Russians were “hot.” C’mon, which is it?
Weir, who finished fifth last week in the men’s figure skating competition, showed up at the Russia House after midnight Tuesday, for his second consecutive night of partying with his favorite comrades.
This time, he wore a beaver-and-python jacket and True Religion jeans, blending in with the other men and women in fur and designer duds. In minutes, he had a leggy Russian woman in stilettos on each of his arms. The trio giggled as they skipped past the hors d’oeuvres.
“These are friends of the lawyer of the richest man in Moscow,” Weir said in passing, as the women tossed their long hair. “These Russians know how to have a good time.”
This all stinks of new money, of arrivistes and shady “entrepreneurs” (many of whom are just old Soviet bureaucrats who were in the right place at the right time to cash in). It’s hard to assess how well-off most Russians are. But it would be hard to find anyone who one wants to go back.
Meanwhile, back at Russia House:
The women interrupt him: “C’mon, Johnny,” one brunette said, in a heavy Russian accent. “We want to dance.”
“Dve minuti!” he yelled out in Russian, telling them to wait two minutes before running off.
