They are everywhere ... and I mean everywhere. On the streets. In the airport. In the Metro. Driving cars or buses. At the press facilities. And of course in the Olympic venues.

Just about everywhere you look, you see them.

In their distinctive blue pants or shorts and white polo shirts with brightly colored sleeves with the Athens 2004 emblem on their backs. And, oh yes, that award winning Olympic smile.

They are the Olympic Volunteers. Forty-Five thousand strong.


Five thousand come from other countries. The rest are home-grown Greeks and darned proud of it ... and of the Games being held in their homeland.

The Athens 2004 folks are all too happy to tell you that 160 thousand people applied for those positions and those accepted are the best of the best.

For a very long time, the volunteers outnumbered the fans in the Olympic complex, but as things picked up, so did their spirits and the ones we see daily around here are downright perky in their zeal to help us out and make our lives easier.

When the key to my office didn’t work, one of the girls had a new one cut at the key maker next to her house.

The day I was feeling sick early on, a mere doctor wouldn’t do. Six or seven of them got together, one called a friend who called a friend, who called a specialist and despite my protestations that I would be ok, I was whisked into an appointment. (I was at least able to convince them that I did not need an ambulance for an earache.)

We’ve become like a big family at the Main Press Center and the Olympic venues. “Our Volunteers” as we call them, have familiar faces and familiar smiles.

A friendly lot, they may not always able to answer your questions, and are often unable to understand the language you’re speaking, but they have been ever enthusiastic as to their desire to help you in any way possible.

They, like us, have settled into the routine about the time it’s all wrapping up.

It’s almost uncanny how weeks after you had a minor introduction they will remember your name and where they met you.

Those I met on my first day here seven weeks ago at the airport still remember me. I wonder if that was part of their training?


Where once the big thing to exchange was pins, people have now begun trading addresses and phone numbers. They even have their own website: www.athens2004volunteer.com where they can share thoughts and stay in touch.

Less than two days to go and we’re all getting nostalgic.

A good chuck of us media types have, for the most part, covered other Olympics and we have come in from throughout the world.

For many of the volunteers, this is their world and has been since they were accepted into the volunteer program. This will likely be their only Olympics. They have thrown themselves into it whole-heartedly to make the most of it.

And they have succeeded.

I have found the Olympics crowds. They are at the beach.

Monday, I decided to do some exploring at another Olympic area – the coastal zone of Faliro.

Faliro is down on the water near the Port of Piraeus. There are three big stadiums there, and it's where events like beach volleyball, handball and taekwondo are taking place.

But it's also where there is a sponsors' plaza where people can come and be a part of the Olympics without buying a ticket. They can listen to music, play games, watch a laser show, and – best of all for some (like me) – trade pins.

Coca-Cola has sponsored an official pin-trading plaza since the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Canada, and for each new Olympics the company comes up with a new concept for its area.

The one constant is that there is always a set of Coke pins which sport the number of that particular day in respect to how many days the Games have been underway. In other words, the “pin of the day.”

Sets of these "p.o.d.'s" are quite coveted by traders for two reasons. First, because they have the sponsor logo on them, and any pin with a sponsor logo makes it more valuable.

Secondly, it has the date on it, and that ups the ante on its trading value as well, because it was made specifically for that date of those Games.

I was there to meet up with Christine Mavromichalis, who is the Coca-Cola venue manager. Because many of the Olympic venues have had sparse attendance, we were wondering if the sponsors at the vendor plaza were having the same issue.

Apparently not.

Imagine my surprise when I showed up on the plaza to find myself staring at a giant, red structure with a long line of people streaming into its mouth like hungry little ants. To make sure people could find their trading area easily, the company made the whole installation one big Coke bottle.

I had to thread my way through the crowds to try and find Christine, and hadn’t even gotten past the lip of the bottle before someone descended upon me to scope out the pins I had around my neck. I’d left the ones I wanted to keep at home, and he wasn’t interested in what I had on display, so he moved on.

Fair enough.

While I waited on Christine, I watched company marketing in action: girls dressed in red dresses with the white Coca-Cola swirl on them thrust these big red paper hands upon people entering the bottle.

Apparently these hands are meant for you to take to events and wave about, but I found most people giving each other high fives with them and posing for pictures.

I declined my pair of red hands, saying I needed my hands free for note taking and pin trading.

There were pins everywhere, pins to look at, pins to buy, pins to trade.

There was even a pin trading computer game and of course, the winner wins a pin.

The crowds were packed in around tables where official traders from literally all over the world bartered their wares. Two thousand of them had applied online through Coca-Cola's website to get approval to trade inside the bottle. About 500 were accepted and they take turns at two-hour shifts during the Games.

Some of the guys I recognized from the pin trading area near the Main Press Center. Each person literally has thousands of pins, and like me, the ones they aren’t willing to part with, they don’t bring.

I made a few small trades, but my main quarry was one that only Coke could offer, the p.o.d..This year, they are designed so that each would honor a past Olympics.

For my Day 10 visit, I scored the Munich Games of 1972, which thrilled me because they were probably the first Olympics I really remember watching. And it was a pin that opened like a door… even better!

Clutching my prize in my hand, I sauntered out the back end of the bottle and into the night. I quickly tucked my pin in my purse, so no one would be tempted to try and trade me for it, because this is one I’m keeping.

Some of the best things to come out of the Olympics (besides the records and the medals) are the photographic images.

At any given event, there is usually an army of photographers watching every move of the athletes. Often, the clicking of their shutters is so loud that you hear it above the noise of the competition.

Some are there to get a shot of the event, but there is a select group that is out there to get THE SHOT of the event.

It’s not always the winner their cameras are trained on. They are instead after something that will capture the artistry of the athlete… the “Kodak Picture of the Day.”

Kodak has a huge facility set up in the basement of the Main Press Center in Athens, to help service the more than 1190 photographers working for various publications. The company also has six of its own guys charged with the mission to go out and bring back the one image out of all the thousands taken in a day that will be printed as a poster and called the “Picture of the Day” or P.O.D. as we, who await its arrival, have come to call it.

Once in a while the honor goes to a photographer from the Getty Images photo service, but all are the sort of shots that you look at, shake your head and ask, “How’d they do that?

Our daily AroundtheRings.com newsletter is featuring the P.O.D. on the cover each day. It wasn’t necessarily planned that way, but Kodak is printing our publication during the Olympics, and we asked for a shot from the Opening Ceremony the first day of the Games, and after that, the routine just sort of happened.

Kodak chooses the P.O.D and makes daily posters of it, which have become coveted mementos of the Games.

Being a real lover of photography, the ability to be a part of this aspect of the Olympics has been an amazing experience.

The photos have a sharpness and composition that make them true art. They have ranged from a North Korean table tennis player, to the gold medal-winning, Italian, individual saber fencing champ. From a close-up shot of a Slovakian kayaker on his gold medal quest, to a Japanese pole vaulter.

Each morning, the Kodak photographers meet with Richard Connolly, the facility head, and plot out what would be the best option. Which sport will provide the best image?

Then they scatter to their assigned locations.

Every day, around 5 p.m., I’m like a kid on Christmas morning when I head down to the basement. What will be today’s gift?

Sometimes, the picture gets chosen early on, and it’s waiting on me. Sometimes, I’m the one doing the waiting – often late into the evening. I think Rich gets a kick out of keeping me in suspense.

We format the whole publication around the cover, and we can’t finish until we have the P.O.D.

“So, Rich, what do we have today?”

“How’d you like the men’s 100 meter race?”

“Sounds great!”

“Good, it should be over about 11:30 tonight.”

“Hmm, I’m thinking there had to be some great pictures of sailing from this morning.”

Before the Games finish, I think I'll tell our designer, Xenia to drop one of MY pictures into a dummy cover page, give it to Rich and tell him we chose our own P.O.D.

I’m thinking the look on his face would definitely be a Kodak moment.

There's a sort of pin frenzy which takes hold at Olympic Games. It's hard to believe until you see it happen, and then get caught up in its wake.

I must confess - I’m a pin-a-holic.

My obsession began during the Barcelona Olympics when I wore a plain USA pin on my shirt, and soon found people stopping me and asking me what else I had to trade. Curious about it all, I became a sort of student of the sport of pin trading, and became so obsessed that my friend Kathy who was with me, told me she was going to have me committed if I didn’t stop.

I blame it all on the “Dream Team.” Barcelona was when Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, et al., formed the ultimate powerhouse for USA basketball at the Games.

There was a limited edition “Dream Team” pin that everyone wanted, and I joined in on the competition to get one. Four days, six pins, and massive negotiations, I finally got possession of the coveted pin, which, I’m sad to say, now resides in a drawer someplace.

I have since developed a nasty Olympic-related habit, which has continued through four subsequent Olympics. Rather than first looking at someone in the face, I look at their clothing, their lanyards, and their hats, scoping their very person for a pin I haven’t seen and now must have.

Olympic pin trading is a sport unto itself. There are actually people who make a living buying and selling the pins considered to be collectible.

There are literally thousands of pins you can purchase, which the Organizing Committees go through great pains to design and sell, but they are mere pretenders to the throne. The most sought after pins are those created by the sponsors, host broadcasters, National Organizing Committees and Sports Federations, because they are allowed to use those all important Olympic Rings.

Some pins are quite detailed, and given only to special guests or officials, such as a Samsung pin given to our Around the Rings editor, which has a flip phone on it with tiny little buttons. Some Torch Relay pins have cars with movable wheels. On one I was able to get, you could move a torch bearer down a street towards a tiny Acropolis.

Kodak’s store in OAKA will actually let you put your photo on a pin, but I doubt that’s something you’d like to trade.

I am now the proud owner of an official Bermuda Olympic pin, as well as a pin similar to the one worn by the athletes of the Canary Islands, when they marched in during the Opening Ceremony.

Groups who don’t have rights to the Rings have gotten so creative that some of their pins are actually collectibles. You can find just about anything remotely reminiscent of a Greek figure somehow adopted as part of their logos.

Greek columns, Greek gods, Greek urns, faux rings… it's all there.

Coca-Cola always sets up a pin trading area, but this year it’s out near the beaches and away from the main Olympic Sport area, so some of the serious guys have set up shop along the sidewalk between the International Broadcasting Center and the Main Press Center.

The Olympics volunteers have picked up on the appeal of 'the pin,' and some have gotten quite savvy about what they're worth trading for, and what they're not. Need something done quickly? Offer a pin.

It’s gotten to the point where “No More Pins!” signs have been posted on doors to keep unsolicited trading from taking place. I sadly had to post a sign of my own this afternoon because four groups of people came in while I was writing.

Given me a day or two to catch up and I’ll be back in the heat of the trade.

Now that we’ve somewhat settled down to a schedule, I set out today on my quest to fulfill the needs of my ever-growing souvenir shopping list, for friends back home.

An easy task, right?

Well, not necessarily.

As we say where I’m from in the southern US (and I guess given the Greek love for cats, it’s appropriate), you can’t swing a cat around here without hitting something with the Olympic Rings on it. It’s on just about everything.

And that’s saying something.

The five Olympic Rings are copyrighted and very heavily defended. Anything that is manufactured with the Rings on it, or indeed even the phrase “Athens 2004,” must get approval from the Athens Organizing Committee.

And given what all I’ve seen out there, someone at ATHOC has been very, very busy.
Sponsors pay some big bucks to get the honor of putting those Rings on their products and gain entry to being sold within the Olympic venues.

So guarded is that sponsorship that us folks at the Media Press Center are not allowed to bring any bag or product into the building if it has a logo on it that is not an Olympic Sponsor. ATHOC claims that such displays are “ambush marketing,” and a slap in the face of the sponsors funding the Games.
This created a bit of a problem for some of us because next to the Press Center is a huge grocery store which is not a sponsor. It’s a main source of office supplies and food for us, but to buy anything there means having to bring your own tote bag to bring it back in, because the store’s logo, as the Germans would say, is verboten (forbidden).

While attempting to meet my own Olympic-sized quest, I opted against shopping at the small “official” souvenir stand in the MPC. Instead, I wanted to see the complete range of choices, so I made the hot and dusty trek to the “Official Olympic Superstore” inside the main Olympic Complex.

A cavernous tent creation, located amidst the “Agora” or marketplace, the store is flanked by spectacular arches which provide some shade against the sweltering heat.

It’s an amazing structure that looks different from every angle, and just begs to have its picture taken.
Within the Superstore, you can shop to your heart’s content for anything from “official” baby booties to an "official” inner tube for your pool.

It truly was mind boggling to see what was considered “official.” Of course there were the usual pins, hats, T-shirts and clothing. But, how about Olympics dinnerware?

Or could I interest you in some “official” fine jewelry?

In fact, there is a whole line of “official” pieces designed by a Greek artisan which were produced in limited quantities. Given that I'll be spending almost eight weeks here, I figured I’d earned a small charm from that category.

To break the stress of parting with your euros, the store tries to liven up the experience by offering some entertainment, including clowns making balloon animals and face painting.

I’d say that part was for the kids, but I saw far more adults around, their faces adorned with painted flags from their country and some not so “official” Rings.

The place was packed, but I was able to score some great T-shirts and hats as well as an “official” carry-on bag to take it all back home with. Of course it was all put in an “official” Official Superstore bag.

(Note to self: Next time, do your shopping after dark when the temperatures are a little easier to bear.

But not to worry, there were “official” water bottles to be purchased, and I can hopefully say my shopping is “officially” done. (But I doubt it!))