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Martin C [<<back] The Sydney Olympic games has, if nothing else, seen a great deal of drinking in Sydney over the past week. Now that half the athletes have finished competing, there are 5,000 plus fit young things running about Sydney intent on having the good time they have missed out on for the last three years. Thus the setting for the Olympic hangover, the mother of all monster hangovers, from which I have still not yet fully recovered. Again the basic recipe is there The extraordinary scenario combined with the surreptitious change of alcoholic beverage. Saturday night was a big one for even Sydney's high standards. The party began in the Olympic village, a certain glimmering Dutch swimmer suggested that I begin the evening with some tulip wine. Not a pleasant brew but after a few, and combined with chocolate and a few of those great green bottles of Grolsh beer, the evening was shaping up to be a blinder. Oh how sadly correct I was. By 10 pm dinner was eaten, stories told and other events watched, and after a brief carnal dalliance, we and the rest of the Dutch contingent, hit the town. The bars and clubs seemed to pass by as quickly as the beers. The celebrity status of our group meant that everything was open and generally free of charge. My only responsibility was to hang on to my Dutch swimmer and not give away the fact that I was not Dutch. We danced, boogied, laughed, snogged, checked out medals, talked (after midnight my dutch was practically fluent) and eventually we piled into a taxi back to the Olympic village. Cue the change of drink. Once back in little Amsterdam where all things are orange and smiley, other athletes of all shapes and nationalities were also congregating. Naturally, there was more talking and carrying on, when oh joy, out came a very large ceramic bottle of Dutch schnapps. I was sceptical at first (having learned, you see, from past experiences of strange drinks), but was reassured by a large Dutchman wearing a gold medal that if drunk during an organized Dutch drinking game, it was virtually harmless and a lot of fun. Having unsuccessfully guessed what colour hair my invisible windmill pixie friend had, for the fifth time, I began feeling a bit woosey. Again, the lessons of old triggered alarm bells. I decided to take a stagger outside, a breath of fresh air was probably all I required. Being completely spaka, I was soon lost in the post-modern architect designed olympic village, where, perchance, two security guards asked me the time of day. Sensing, I have no idea what, I replied "To the glory of the Netherlands" in Dutch and ran, until the baton of one of the kind gentlemen convinced me to fall unconscious, an option I was seriously considering anyway. The old story, I awoke, covered in sick and this time blood as well. The cell I was in was not unlike the outback farm nor the ship bar. It was desolate, hot, stinky, and utterly disorientating. There was hangover spinning curtesy of the drink, concussion spinning curtesy of the rent-a-cops, and freak-out spinning curtesy of my own panic as I tried desperately to piece together the circumstances that had bought me here. It was also deadly quiet. And it seemed like I lay in this position for an eternity, my watch said it was either 3pm or 3am. Again I was caked in (presumably) my own vomit and seriously considering never waking up again. The taste of sick, chocolate, schnappsy stuff and cigars was impossible to be rid of. I found myself making odd noises just to break the silence of my own private hell. Every sense in my body said that everything was seriously wrong and painful but sleep was the only viable course of action. At a later point, indeterminable due to the lack of natural light, I was interrogated, well, probably just questioned within the letter of the law but in such a delicate condition it was certainly the worst circumstance to have incomprehensible questions fired at you. I was given a 150 ml cup of water which was considerate, but I threw it up almost immediately. Things still got worse, by this stage my thoughts were coming together much like a school of fish trying to evade a larger fish (ie. they seemed to be ordered somehow but everything is happening too fast and chaotic with a sense of fear thrown in). Or to use another animal analogy, I could not get all my ducks lined up. Try as I might, I could not understand anything. It seems I was found wearing the ID 'around the neck type' badge of the head of the Dutch Olympic delegation; a fifty year old bloke with no hair, obviously not me. To further confuse things I had left my wallet somewhere in Sydney the night before. And that, after being captured, I resisted arrest, vomited on my captors and was screaming the very, very few Dutch words (drinking salutes) I had only so recently learned. And the reason I had been kept for so long was that they were trying to find an interpreter. And it was then this interpreter who was questioning me. For some reason my comprehension of the Dutch language had deserted me even though I had mastered it the previous night. I was wearing Dutch made clothes, mostly orange, and even Dutch underwear, curtesy of my Dutch swimmer babe. To be monsterly hungover, dehydrated, disorientated and confined, and questioned loudly in a foreign language, while concussed and after having committed some relatively serious offences, made for the Olympic hangover experience. I thought this hangover peaked when my Dutch babe came to get me released later that night and then belted me across the ear, but no, the nausea remains even now three days later. Though yesterday morning was probably the worst of it when I awoke and got sick, a full 36 hours after my drinking had started. On the positive side though, I'm writing this in her room and my overriding sense is that it was all worth it as she is such a peach. Ha, she just kissed me. |
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