The Media Village

Welcome to the Media Village!

After arriving last night about 6:30pm local time, I unpacked and got settled, wrote my blog entry, showered, and then went to bed at 11:30pm (local time), but even though I was extremely tired, I woke up at 2:30am, and then 4:30am, before giving up and rising at 5:30am and going in to work for 7:30am. I am told it will take a couple of days to adjust (just in time for me to then have to switch over to my work hours, which look like they will be midnight to noon). This is actually a pretty good schedule, as I will have daylight hours from noon to about 4 or 5pm to do tourist type things, and then try to sleep from 5pm to 11pm before going back to work.

Anyway, since I was up early this morning, I took a little walk around the Media Village. Let me take you on a quick tour:

There are a few Media Villages (MV) in use for the games. Mine is called the "North Star Media Village" (by NBC), but all the signs here say "Green Homeland Media Village". It will house over 6000 media representatives from around the world in a number of large condo-like buildings.

There are shuttle buses that loop through the village, but the grounds are clean and quite pretty, with lots of vegetation, flowers and walkways.

The MV is located in what looks to be a nice "upper-middle class" neighbourhood. We are separated from a large community of nice looking "townhouses" by a flimsy looking chain link fence, and a "moat".

The "moat" isn't very deep, OK, I think it's actually a stream, but we are "protected" from the locals next door by this guy:

He stands there, unmoving, all day, staring into the neighbouring community daring somebody to try and cross the fence.

This is my building, C2, and I am on the 18th floor (of 32). There are about 16 apartments on each floor, each housing 1 or 2 people. Buildings C2, C3, and C4 are reserved for NBC personnel, so taking some averages, I'd guess that there are about 2300 NBC people just in this MV.

The building is not air conditioned, but each bedroom is (thankfully). My apartment is a "3 bedroom", with 2 bathrooms, and a common area. Here is the common area, just inside the apartment door:

I (supposedly) share the apartment with a roommate who is already here, but whom I have yet to see or hear. His bedroom has an ensuite, while my bathroom is across the hall from my bedroom (so we each have our own bathroom). The bathroom is nice, clean, and a lot larger than in Athens.

My bedroom is also quite nice, and reasonably spacious, with an armoire, twin bed, night table, desk, chair, and a TV and stand.

From my window, I have a view overlooking the stream, fence, and neighbouring community. You can see that things are pretty smoggy, even at 7:00am.

The Media Village provides all kinds of services to its guests, including a Post Office, Medical Services, a Fitness Centre, a Pool, 7 Restaurants/Bars (and free breakfasat), Laundry Facilities, a Newsstand, and a General Store. There is also wireless Internet access, but it doesn't reach my room, and service is spotty throughout the village.

Overall, this is one of the nicest Media Villages I have stayed at (certainly with more services available than ever before).