Many have asked before: Why are you going there at all? It’s voluntary, that can only be bad.
Every time I answered that the athletes deserved someone to be there, to interview them, to take their perhaps most beautiful moment home and to share their homeland.
Please don’t – yes!
And every time I added: I just don’t want to test positive and then have to go to the quarantine hotel. And then that’s exactly what happens right after landing. Without having seen anything of these games and their preparations in Beijing.
So now locked in a room, 16 square meters, overlooking a barren, slightly snow-covered rock. Three meals a day. Enough to fill you up, but not particularly tasty.
Garbage mountains – not sustainable
This morning there was, among other things, a tomato and broccoli salad and cold, rather baggy fries.
Incidentally, each small ingredient is packed in its own plastic bowl, seven to eight bowls packed in a large cellophane bag. Three times a day. I would rather not see my mountain of rubbish at the end of this quarantine. So much for sustainable games.
The colleagues from ARD production sent me a care package. With lots of chocolate and even more important: with German coffee. How you can miss things that are taken for granted so quickly. There are seven filter bags included. Is that a hint? Do they out there know more? Am I in here for seven more days?
A book about love and hate
And at the bottom of the bag I find another book. “Love in times of hate” – what could be more fitting in the current world?
Speaking of which – the people who work here in their full-body protective suits, bring food, take temperatures, do PCR tests and take out the garbage are all friendly without exception. All very young. We would say: volunteers.
Here in China, people are not so sure.
One would like to talk to them, ask them what they think of these Olympic Games, whether they are happy, what they think about human rights and freedom of expression.
communication? Difficult …
It fails because of the language. Communication is only possible via a translation program on the smartphone. They would probably just dodge and smile politely anyway.
The breakfast bag just handed me one with a “Happy Chinese New Year” in it. Oh yes – the most important festival of the year for the Chinese begins today. The families get together and wish each other happiness for the new year. This time it’s the year of the tiger.
How might the athlete who is jumping rope somewhere above me think about it.
In between, a medicine ball is thrown against a wall – at least that’s what it sounds like.
What do the athletes think?
How is that? When you have had this Olympic dream for years, then finally make it, arrive full of expectations and excited and then shortly before your destination are taken to a remote hotel? “Happy Chinese New Year”.
When do you come out again? Is it enough until the competition? Can you actually keep fit here? Terrible thoughts for me.
Shouldn’t this all have been postponed by a year?
Cheated, robbed, cheated…
And there’s one more thing: Aren’t all the athletes at these Olympic Games cheated, robbed, or, to put it in plain English, cheated?
Olympic Games without spectators (apart from a few selected Chinese), without the exuberant happiness that actually goes with it. Even someone who wins an Olympic medal here, maybe even the gold medal, will certainly not be celebrated as he or she deserves.
The rejection of these games, the criticism and the bad feeling will probably play too much of a role at home.
So far, 176 people involved in the games have been reported to have tested positive. Including numerous athletes. And most of them are just arriving.
Hundreds in the quarantine hotel?
If the trend continues, there will be 300 or maybe even 400 people in a quarantine hotel for the opening ceremony. What an idea.
And of course one can ask why we, as rapporteurs, are doing all this. Maybe even support indirectly. As I said, I gave myself the answer before I left. Because the athletes who start here can’t help it.
And because I want to be there when something isn’t going well, when things are actually being manipulated, when injustice needs to be investigated. I’ll do that when I get out of here, hopefully in five days.
After an experience that you would certainly like to do without, but which also allows you to pause for a moment.