Eugene Bingham: Athens buses test your mettle

COMMENT

There's an Olympic game that I'm really enjoying in Athens: wiling away the hour upon hour spent in trains and buses.

Sure, time-wasting doesn't require finely honed skills but it's arduous and it's taken years of training, sitting in Auckland's rush-hour traffic.

Now before anyone thinks this is a gripe about Greece, let me say for the record it's not; it's just part of being caught up in the Games juggernaut.

In fact it was in Sydney four years ago that I learned the particular mind game that helps occupy my time on the journeys when I haven't got a story to write.

One of the best things about the Games is how it draws people from around the world. Stuck in a train or bus, it's fun to figure out where people are from and to listen to the blend of languages and cultures - sometimes mixed up in the same conversation.

My wife and I still laugh about the couple of athletes we heard talking on a train late one night during the Sydney Games. Their rapid-fire Russian chattering was interrupted only by bursts of English as they belted out the choruses of popular rap hits.

This week, my bus-bound encounters with the world have included Bulgaria, Estonia and Mexico.

Sometimes it takes a peek at the Olympic accreditation badge to figure out where someone's from. Other times the accents are a dead giveaway.

On Monday, waiting, waiting, waiting, on a bus to the Olympic Stadium, I heard two guys nattering across the aisle to each other.

I recognised their Aussie accents quickly and then realised their voices and banter sounded familiar.

"So I guess Hadrian was the man then?" said one, as we waited near Hadrian's Arch for the bus to get moving.

"There's this [the arch], there's a stadium," said the other.

"Do you think he drew the plans up himself?"

"Well ... there was probably a minister or something."

"Sir? This is the sort of thing we had in mind."

I turned around to confirm my suspicions. Yep, it was Roy Slaven and H. G. Nelson, the Australian larrikins who became stars of the Sydney Games with their nightly Olympic wrap-up, The Dream.

Here they were in Athens ready to do it all again.

It was delightful to know that they were as naturally funny as they were on television, bouncing off each other in their laid-back manner.

I didn't dare speak to them - Kiwis were common targets on The Dream and I was sure it would be the same on the bus.