#5 Living my dreams - let it last forever

Now it is day 9 of Olympic games and I can tell you, I live my dreams. Amazing venues, crazy atmosphere, top athletes of the world, wonderful city - it is like wonderland for me.

With my flag enjoying olympic park

Venues - arenas and stadiums are amazing,  atmosphere at all of them is great, Brazilians really like sports and they know how to support all partcipants. The organization although is not so good, especially ticketing and transport to the venues is a problem, as one of athletes in olympic village said, they are never on time, when they supposed to be. When you are on spectator buses, you can expect to be like sardines in a tin, too many people. Security is also just like on airport, so all procedure to come to the venue and spectator area or your work, it takes at least 30 mins.

But once you are in, you forget about all the problems before - then opens for me totally different world - spectators from all over the world, if you are in national uniform - they want to take picture with you, if you are in volunteer uniform, they will ask you a lot of questions, but all people are really kind and atmosphere is amazing. Special olympic sport is also exchange of pins, some people have like a hundred of them, so on my next olympics I will be prepared and bring a lot of Slovenian ones.

Here are some venues:

Olympic tennis stadium

Water polo arena

Olympic park panorama - from left to right Cariocas arenas triplets 1,2,3; Future arena, Olympic aquatics stadium

Olympic stadium - athletics 

Handball - Future arena

My workspace - Badminton arena - RioCentro Pavillion 4

At olympics is also a great time to see some new sports live, so I try to visit as many venues as possible, for me everywhere is a lot of spectators, more than I expected. But the best atmosphere and most amazing venue of this olympic games is for sure BeachVolley arena on famous Copacabana beach - I was lucky to be there on a rival game between home Brazil team and neighbour Argentinian team, crazy atmosphere, full arena, amazing athletes and view from dreams. 

BeachVolley Arena at Copacabana beach

But from the spectator position I can say that with Brazilian fans only Slovenian fans especially organized on handball matches, leaded by my friends from Trebnje. At match of Slovenia versus Brazil, at some moments we have been louder than full Future Arena of brazilian fans. We are not a lot of people here, but we support our team from all heart!

The best fans on the world - supporting team Slovenia (source: www.delo.si)

Also volunteer experience is amazing, making new friends from all over the world. Volunteers are from 18 years old to more than 70, all races, all nationalities. And all of them are amazing people, for most of foreigners there is sometimes a problem, that some of Brazilian ones, does not speak English. Luckily we got tags: I speak English, so by accreditation you know, who is easier to speak with him or her. But I will leave more from making friends and meeting people from all over the world for the next story. It is so amazing that especially us international volunteers already started thinking about next project - Tokyo2020. 

Until next time from Olympic Rio,

Simon Ranfl