Daaah-dah-dada-dah-dah-dah

Some of you have heard me tell the tale of how, in the summer of 2021 while watching the Olympics and looking at some of the aerial shots of Tokyo, I thought about how different the city seemed to look from my visit there in the early eighties. Then I realized that on my last trip in the Before Covid times (hereinafter BC), I had visited another Olympics host city – Rio de Janeiro and Paris on the trip before that. Although I’ve never been to the Olympic Games, this sequence prompted me to think about and list all the host cities I’ve visited. When I finished the total came to 19. I followed this with a Wikipedia search for a list of cities that have hosted either the Summer or Winter Olympics.

I don’t know if 19 is a lot, average or a few but here’s some perspective: Since the beginning of the modern Olympic era, we have seen 28 Summer Games with 23 host cities and 23 Winter Games hosted by 20 different cities.  This means my 19 cities represent slightly more than 44 percent of all the host cities.

Since I’ve been unable to travel for so long and writing on this site has remained dormant as a result, I thought it might be interesting to write a series of posts about each of these cities approaching them in the chronological order of my visit.

I will begin with Montreal a city I first visited as a teen sometime between 1966 and 1968 as part of a Jewish Community Center sponsored trip. I have made two subsequent trips to this city in southern Quebec – once to see the Expos play and once to visit my sister when she resided there in the early years of this century.

The cities that will follow Montreal are in sequence: Atlanta, London, Tokyo, Nagano, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Beijing, Moscow, Oslo, Lillehammer, Stockholm, Helsinki, Sarajevo, Salt Lake City, Calgary, Paris, and Rio. I have to note two curious omissions from the list. First, there’s the absence of Lake Placid – a two time Olympic venue. I mention this because Lake Placid is the host city closest to where I live – even if by only a few miles.  The second is that although my old passport has more visa stamps (six) from Germany than any other country, I have only been in German airports and thus have obviously not been to any of the three German Olympic host cities.

As I noted, I’ll write about each city in the chronological sequence of my visits there. You’ll find several posts about each place. The first post will cover my recollections of my visit so please keep in mind that in some cases I will be dredging through memories that are decades old. I intend to write about them as accurately as I can evoke them but it’s possible (and even likely) that I’ve idealized some of them. It’s almost certain that some will be less than accurate but I don’t mean that as an intentional deception.

The second post in each series will cover the Games themselves though not in endless depth. In general, unless I find something of particular interest, this will be an addendum that touches upon some of the highlights and perhaps controversies of that city’s Games. Some of the Games connect one to the other so I will write, for example, about Dan Jansen’s experiences in Lillehammer before I write about what happened in Calgary. You could choose to read about the cities in order of my visits then, if you want to read about the Games themselves in chronological sequence, wait until I’ve published the complete series. For those who might want to do that, here’s a list of the Games in their chronological sequence rather than the order of my visit. I’ll designate the Winter Games with a W:

Paris – 1900, 1924

St. Louis  – 1904

London – 1908; 1948; 2012

Stockholm – 1912

Los Angeles – 1932; 1984

Oslo – W 1952

Helsinki – 1952

Tokyo – 1964; 2020 *2021

Montreal – 1976

Moscow – 1980

Sarajevo – W 1984

Calgary – W 1988

Lillehammer – W 1994

Atlanta – 1996

Nagano – W 1998

Salt Lake City – W 2002

Beijing – 2008 (Note: I will not write about the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.)

Vancouver – W 2010

Rio de Janeiro – 2016

I’ll follow those with some posts labeled supplements. These will be more in keeping with the historical or geographical perspectives that typify my travel reflections. To make the series more digestible, I’ve set an upper limit of 1,500 words for each post and I’ll make every effort not to exceed that limit. As for those cities I’ve previously written about in depth, I’ll summarize my visit and post links to the original posts (or to the trip category). With regard to photos and illustrations, I will likely retrieve most of them from other internet sites and from the public domain.

I’ll begin tomorrow in Montreal and hope I can provide some entertainment and information along the way.