Our final wild night in Turin, Part I

Wow, the blog got boring for a few days, but no more. This'll be good. Teaser: at 5 a.m. last night/this morning we were hanging out with the Dutch curling team in downtown Turin, and they made a dramatic revelation. Check back all day for the details.

(Note: I can't swear that last night was actually our final crazy night, but all of you bored government workers will be abandoning me again come tomorrow, and when you return to work on Monday our Italian internet connections will be gone and so will this blog. So get your fill today. And I'm doing one final chat this afternoon at 1 p.m. Eastern; here's the link, send me your comments and questions.)

Anyhow, last night we had two invitations: to the Slovak House for a 7 p.m. party celebrating Slovakia's bid to host the World Hockey Championships, and to the Holland Heineken House for a 9 p.m. party celebrating Joey Cheek and Johann Koss and Right to Play.

But I was waiting for my co-workers to accompany me, and we all got drawn into the women's figure skating, and then many of them had to do actual work, which is something I haven't approached for more than two weeks now. So we watched Sasha fall, and we watched Irina fall, and we listened to Mike Wise yell "Down goes Frazier, Down goes Frazier." I watched tape delay curling on the CBC; the women's bronze medal game was condensed to about 20 minutes, taking all the allure out of the game. Mike Wise threw peanuts into the New York Times's office. By the time everyone was ready--Mike Wise, loving roommate Les and Nationals beat writer Barry Svrluga--it was almost 1 a.m., and so we chose the 9 p.m. Holland House party over the 7 p.m. Slovak House party.

When the cab dropped us off outside the enormous warehouse, most of the young people were walking towards us, which seemed like a bad sign. We tried the front door but were denied access; some kids had been thrown out, and some other kids weren't being allowed in, and the security guard said it would look bad if he let us in, so he directed us around back to the press entrance. The press entrance led to a press lounge, which led to a press café, which led to a basketball court. The noise vibrations led us back outside, down a muddy path, and finally into an enormous high school dance whose musical selection, at the moment, was a techno version of "California Dreamin,'" played at a volume meant to rattle your soul.

"Oh, I have this album," Barry said.

By Dan Steinberg |  February 24, 2006; 8:26 AM ET
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Posted by: Natalie | February 24, 2006 09:25 AM

Posted by: Bob Roberts | February 24, 2006 09:54 AM

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