OLYMPICS NOTEBOOK/Canadians Gone Wild in Vancouver

Photo Courtesy of the Eichners An Australian TV reporter does his stand-up atop Whistler Mountain.

By Ad and Jill Eichner

VANCOUVER, B.C. - We are now here, lucky to escape the DC area just after Snowmageddon, at the fifth Winter Olympics for us, and the third for our 15-year-old son Alec Eichner.  
 

Photo Courtesy of the Eichners Canadian Mounties at Whistler.

We drove from home in Alexandria to BWI Airport and flew to Seattle through Minneapolis.  We started getting into the Olympic spirit on the plane, because in the two rows around us were two women from Charlotte, NC. and a family from Minneapolis, also traveling to the XXI Winter Olympiad, held this time around from February 12–28 in Vancouver, British Columbia.
 
The Charlotte women and Jill we met on the plane had made many of the same travel plans, flying into Seattle instead of Vancouver (Seattle is much cheaper), staying in the same hotel in Seattle, taking the same Amtrak train to Vancouver,  and staying in the Canadian resort town of Whistler in condos next door to each other.  
 
Breakfast at the hotel in Seattle was fun as everyone was staying there because it was close to the Amtrak station and we were all taking the train to Vancouver.  Our breakfast guests included our Charlotte friends, a 50-plus guy from Scotland going to visit a child in Vancouver (who had somehow gotten US vs Canada men’s hockey tickets), several other Europeans and young Americans from all over.
 

Photo Courtesy of the Eichners The ever-spirited Swedes yuck it up at Whistler.

The train trip on Amtrak was quite a departure from the typical DC-NY corridor experience.  Like at home, the train station was mobbed with travelers but there were two wonderful differences.  First, we all had seat assignments, so there was no mad scramble for seats.  
 
Second, our luggage was checked, and was waiting for us on the platform when we got off in Vancouver.  We had an escort on the trains by the heavily armed Amtrak Mobile Tactical Unit carrying what looked like machine guns (actually short rifles), and accompanied by a bomb-sniffing dog.  
 
Ad chatted with one of the Amtrak conductors and discovered that his normal gig was at Union Station in DC, while the woman with the sniffing dog was from New York. Arriving in Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was out in force as well.  
 
While the food was the usual Amtrak fare, the overall experience felt more European (orderly) than our East Coast experience.  The ride was smooth and offered beautiful scenery along water almost the entire trip, with scores of islands nearby and the land rising quickly to the East from the shoreline (called a fjor).
 
In Vancouver, we experienced the drizzling weather that has typified Vancouver’s Olympic weather so far; no snow in town but big exuberant crowds from all over the world.  We took the Skytrain (Vancouver’s super-fast Metro), into town, passing a big Olympic park that included the Russians’ exhibit promoting the next winter Olympics; this was located in a big geodesic dome called the Ruskidome.   
 
We arrived in downtown Vancouver and started walking.  We were reminded of how much “swag” goes along with being attached to a country’s Olympic team – there are groups from each country dressed in identical ski outfits walking down the street together.  Some are athletes, of course, but some are managers, officials, or chefs for the teams.  
 
You get to know where people are from by the outfits.
 

Photo Courtesy of the Eichners Guards in the Seattle train station

The Russians seemed particularly noticeable with white outfits with ‘Russia’ in big bright red letters across the shoulders, same as in Turin in 2006.  Jill took advantage of the outfits by targeting small groups for interviews on her Flip video to show her students at Willliamsburg Middle School, where she teaches in Arlington.   
 
Generally, though, we found ourselves in relatively large crowds in a great, friendly mood, shopping, trading Olympic pins, visiting Canada Place and the Olympic Flame and other Vancouver attractions.  We went to the big Hudson Bay Trading Company store downtown, which is a major Olympic sponsor.  
 
Just that morning, anti-Olympic protesters had broken several of the store’s picture windows, and police tape surrounded those sidewalk areas.   Hudson Bay was buzzing with activity; Coke and VISA both sponsored large Olympic-paraphernalia and pin-trading areas inside with lines too long for us to suffer through, but we made it up to the fifth floor packed with people buying Olympic-logo’d items.  
 

Photo Courtesy of the Eichners Pin trading in downtown Vancouver

After a few hours in Vancouver, we caught a bus to Whistler, a two-hour drive north along the coast.  The land rises quickly as you leave Vancouver, giving beautiful elevated views of the Vancouver skyline and ships at rest in the harbor as night began to fall.  
 
Then the views are of huge Douglas fir trees on steep cliffs to the right (inland), and a gorgeous fjord to the left, with islands and pristine beauty for miles.  Again, the bus was packed with people from many countries, all on their way up to the site of the Alpine and sliding events.  
 
If you like to ski, going to the Olympics provides a great winter vacation where you can both ski and watch some events, while being immersed in an interesting cultural and sports environment.
 
On Sunday, we left Whistler Mountain – where we’re staying all week -- to head down to the men’s mogul event at Cypress Mountain, which is between Vancouver and Whistler.  Moving around takes time (we left Whistler at 9:30 a.m. and got home at about 10 p.m.)  
 
But it was worth it; a great day, a great event. Canada won its first gold medal at a Canadian-based Olympics with a blistering run on the next-to-last skier.  Silver went to the winner of the 2006 Gold in Torino, a millionaire “traitor” who had left Canada for Australia as a teenager.  

But being there in person isn’t really about the winners and losers; it’s about being there in the crowd, being part of the excitement; it’s the flags flying from all different countries, the multitude of languages, the goodwill, the people cheering for the athlete who falls and keeps going, the crowd all cheering for every one of these athletes.   

Even the transportation part is fun.  
 

Photo Courtesy of the Eichners Attiring for the elements at The Hudson Bay store in Vancouver.

People on the buses and trains are very talkative during the Olympics: unlike a bus or train on a normal day in a city, during the Olympics people are quite friendly, knowing that they all share something (“Are you going to the moguls event?"  And, "Were you at Torino?”)  
 
On the mandatory Olympic bus to the moguls venue (no other way to get there), we chatted with a couple from Toronto who had driven to Buffalo to fly to Seattle to avoid the high Canadian fares, and a man from Brazil who now lived in Vancouver with his wife and kids, who was so proud of the five Brazilian athletes here for the Olympics.  
 
The Canadian locals gladly offer advice to the Olympic tourists: “No, take the 239 bus to North Vancouver” and “I’ll tell you when your stop is next," so there’s a general feeling of goodwill all around.   

Jill and Ad Eichner live in Alexandria. This is their fifth Winter Olympics. Stay tuned for their next installation: The Whistler Experience.

Photo Courtesy of the Eichners Inside the Hudson Bay store in Vancouver.