Everyone knows the Olympics just began. Well that's what I assumed. After traveling in Ireland this weekend, I discovered that some people actually don't care much for the olympics. To me it seemed everyone in America had there television set on NBC for the 17 day span of olympic events. That was not the case in Ireland. The first night of the opening ceremony, Ashley and I got ready and headed out to a pub to watch the ceremony. This was our first mistake. Not only did we have trouble finding somewhere that actually had them on the television, but most of the pubs had live music that made it impossible to hear. We ended up having to give up and miss the ceremony all together. The next night we decided to skip the pubs all together. We went down to the tv room in our hostel only to find that everyone was watching a movie. None of them were concerned that the swimming finals were taking place at that very moment. I mean this could have just been my devastation that I was missing Ryan Lochte in a speedo, but I don't think this was abnormal for most people. Everyone watches the olympics. I had to get all of my olympic updates from twitter and facebook. I must say I am thankful for these social mediums, but I was appalled. No one in Ireland seemed concerned about the olympics at all. I wonder if this is has a cultural aspect or a history aspect.
While traveling this weekend, I also discovered the same thing. I went to Ibiza, Spain, and on the night of the opening ceremony, our group went in search of a place to watch and have dinner. When we finally found a place with a TV, they refused to change the channel from some reality TV show on MTV, even though multiple other customers had requested to view the opening ceremony as well.
ReplyDeleteIs this because places such as Ireland and Ibiza feel someone detached from the Olympics? Ireland has 66 olympians competing this year while both Great Britain and the United States having more than 500 competitors each. I'm sure Ibiza, a small island city off of the coast of Spain, has even less representation at the Games. So is the reason we are all so excited for the Olympics, simply because we Americans have so many athletes representing us, and therefore more success at the Games?
I was with Hannah in Ireland this weekend. We were both shocked and very frustrated. After thinking about it, I realized that it was not too terribly odd that the Irish as a whole did not care about the Olympics. It is understandable that the Irish are less engaged because they typically do not send very many athletes to the Olympics and they also do not have a large history of medals. However, Dublin is a fairly global city. There were people from all over the world in Dublin this weekend. Just in the two days we were there we met people from America, Finland, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, and Denmark. The apathy from the Irish can be justified, but what about the rest of the world? I was not as surprised by the Irish indifference as I was surprised by the indifference from the international population.
ReplyDeleteI watched the opening ceremonies at a pub in London this weekend. Although there was a small crowd there, it was definitely a different atmosphere than what you would see in the United States. One British woman did nothing but criticize the entire opening performance of the opening ceremony. At first, I though the things she was saying were kind of amusing, and I appreciated the sarcasm. However, after a while her commentary started to bother me. Why not have a little pride in your home country? Also, I did not get to watch the final parts of the opening ceremony because the pub was ready to close down, so they turned the audio off. This lack of interest and pride shocked me, especially since Britain is the host nation.
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