Sochi
Sochi (or Со́чи in Cyrillic) is a resort on the Black Sea famous for its mild climate. In fact it is famous as one of the few places in Russia where it doesn’t snow in the winter.
It is a spa town and so has many hotels and was even in Soviet times a popular location for holidaying especially amongst the elite. It is sometimes called the “Black Sea Riveria” as the climate is so mild and the like the French Riveria.
It won the bid to host the twenty-second Winter Olympics at a meeting of the International Olympic Committee in Guatemala in July 2007. It outbid Salzburg, Austria and Pyeongchang, South Korea. It is the first time an olympic games have been hosted in the Russian Federation.
It is currently believed to be the most expensive Olympic games in history at 51 billion US Dollars as the previously most expensive were the Beijing games in 2008 cost 44 billion US Dollars to stage.
questions we suggested
- Does the investment pay for the future?
- How many billion Euro has been spent on it?
- What do we think about the German uniform?
- Do the Russian people stand behind the plans for the Olympics?
- What is the latest news from Sochi on German medal hopes?
- How many inhabitants does Sochi have normally and with the Olympic games on?
- How many countries are participating in the Olympics?
- What went wrong at the opening ceremony?
- Is it important for you individually how Germany does in the Olympics?
- Where will we finish up in the medal table?
- Are the buildings / structures going to be used afterwards?
- What do we think about the security at the event?
- Are there any advantages for the Russian people in hosting this event?
- What happened to the local people that live there?
- What happened to the stray dogs that live there?
and we spent the evening discussing some of these issues.
Some responses for far
Before the Olympics officially started there had been many tweets from foreign journalists about the state of the hotels. You can see the The Washington Post report about that here
The Opening Ceremony was glitchy and glitzy according to some newspapers.
The medals table for the Olympic games can be seen here courtesy of the BBC.