If you ask some average Parisians about whether they’ll be attending the 2024 Olympic Games, the answer will be a resounding “are you out of your mind?”
Between the crowds, blocked-off sections of the city and higher prices for everything from food to riding the Métro — the cost of a single ride will eventually go back down to the usual €2.15 ($2.33) from the €4 ($4.34) being charged during the Olympics — most locals who already have a cultural habit of going to the sea in August do not want to be anywhere near the city this summer.
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But those of us who are watching the 33rd edition of the modern Olympic Games far away from the City of Lights have the luxury of seeing the best of the city through the lens of the Olympic Games and wishing to be there.
The Olympics and wanting to be in the City of Lights
The opening ceremony, which begins at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time and 7:30 p.m. French time on July 26, will have everything to win over the francophiles and Paris-obsessed among us. The rumor is that, instead of walking through a stadium as usual, the athletes will arrive on traditional bateaux mouche excursion boats along the Seine River in a flotilla that will showcase classic Paris landmarks like the Notre-Dame Cathedral and Musée d’Orsay.
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My own love of Paris began early in life. Finishing a French-language public school in Canada broke the language and cultural barrier and, after several school and family trips as a child that always felt too short, I moved there at the age of 25 when I hit a wall on both a personal and professional front in New York.
“Just moving to Paris” is something that usually only the very young or the fairly privileged can do but, in my case, the city did not fail to offer the bouffée d’air frais (breath of fresh air) that it also has for generations of writers and other creative people. I arrived in March when the winter winds still came on certain days and settled into a one-bedroom Airbnb (ABNB) apartment with a view of Sacré-Cœur for less than I was spending on a single bedroom in Brooklyn.
Veronika Bondarenko poses for a selfie in Paris in March 2018.
Veronika Bondarenko
Olympic Games through a personal prism: past and future Paris travel
I’d spend days wandering along the same Seine that will be showcased so prominently in the Olympic Games (eventually mustering up the courage to rent a scooter and ride along it at greater speeds and distances to explore every corner of the city) while coming back to the apartment to do remote work for a company on the East Coast. Past failures and heartbreaks now seemed so insignificant because, well, I was in Paris! So many opportunities opened up once I took a step outside and looked beyond the circumstances I was then turning in.
What was supposed to be a short break of three months turned into two years of back-and-forth between France, Canada and New York as I worked out visas and a steady flow of income.
So much has changed since then — not least of all the fact the city has since massively cracked down on both Airbnbs and Lime scooters — but the Paris of either one’s youth or one’s imagination has always been just an idea. It can energize you throughout life if you leave it in the past but will invariably disappoint if you aim to recreate it too closely.
But we will still always see global events like the Olympic Games through the prism of our own experiences and wishes: the athlete we could have been, the city we could have ended up in or the places we want to see either again or for the first time once the hype goes down. For countless people, the opportunity to see Paris showcased in such a way will inspire thoughts of trips there for years to come.
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