Last week I was in Paris with my wife Terry, my daughter Elissa, and Elissa's boyfriend Mark. We were there for the Olympics, and other than coming home with a case of Covid to a house without electricity thanks to a powerful storm a few days earlier, it was incredible.
We didn't get to any of the truly high-profile events. Or at least I didn't. I was already coming a day later than Terry, Elissa and Mark, but a delayed connecting flight forced me to miss my plane to Paris and to arrive on Sunday morning, rather than Saturday afternoon as planned.
The result was that my three travel companions got to watch the U.S. women's soccer team defeat Japan 1-0 on Saturday while I was still hanging around the airport in Atlanta.
Even though I wasn't there, my favorite thing about that match was that a number of people apparently asked to take pictures with my family, especially Elissa and Mark, who were dressed like this:
Elissa is on the left and Mark on the right, The woman in the middle was one their adoring fans at the U.S.-Japan women's soccer match who asked to take photos with them.
I just loved that. Elissa says cowboy hats, in particular, are a novelty for Europeans, who quite naturally don't get to see them very often.
Anyway, I didn't make women's soccer, but I did get to attend women's field hockey and a session of track and field. For all the hassle it was to get to the some of the venues – and make no mistake, the endless subway rides and countless steps we took to reach these sites were a hassle by any definition – the atmosphere, energy and fan camaraderie at Olympic events almost can't be described.
As Ferris Bueller would say, I highly recommend it.
Among the people we encountered during our week in Paris, my favorite were the fans from the Netherlands. They come from a relatively small country, but when their nation is represented on the international athletic stage, they show up loudly and proudly in large numbers.
I quickly realized that all of us who don't happen to come from the Netherlands/Holland have quite a bit to learn from the Dutch. To the point that I think we would be better off if we formed some sort of world government and allowed the Netherlanders to oversee it.
Three reasons why:
(1) They're smart: Mark and I were standing in line between field hockey matches outside Stade Yves-du-Manoir waiting to refill our water bottles. The line was long and the sun was hot. At one point the two Dutch guys in front of us persuaded almost everyone to move the line about 10 feet to the left so we could all be in the shade. It was a simple idea, but it hadn't occurred to anyone else. They convinced several people with whom they do not share a common language the mutual benefit of shifting the line over. That takes impressive communication skills. And brains.
(2) They're very comfortably bilingual: We talked briefly with the two smart Dutch men, and their wonderful grasp of English reminded me how effortlessly people in that part of Europe switch among languages. I worked with many people at Goodyear who were fluent in at least three languages and it always impressed me. In my experience, people who can speak in multiple tongues are generally people worth listening to.
(3) They proudly wear orange in mass numbers: While the flag of the Netherlands is red, white and blue, the national color is orange. Their fans deck themselves out in orange shirts, orange pants, orange hats, orange socks, etc. When we saw them take on Great Britain in field hockey, the stands were a sea of orange and orange variants. The only people not wearing orange were the relatively reserved British fans and us. Everyone else was cheering in unison for a Netherlands team that would go on to win the gold medal in the event. Want results? Get everyone on the same page, no matter their role in the process. The Dutch have known that for years.
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