First Event of Sochi Olympics: The Hotel Construction Sprint

The official mascots for the Winter Olympics are a polar bear, a hare and a leopard. But walk around the complexes that will stage the Games here, with the opening ceremony Friday, and what seem more apt are a hand drill, a backhoe and a shovel.

Much of Sochi is a work in progress, and parts of it look at least a dozen all-nighters away from completion. There are unfinished hotels, half-finished stores and a mall where the only shop that is open and thriving is a Cinnabon.

Wander the premises over the course of a day and you also get a palpable sense of spectacular ambition, reflected in millions of square feet of new construction, as well as transportation hubs with spiffy trains and shiny buses. You will see an Olympic Park where sporting venues look reassuringly ready.

The combination is singular — an enterprise that is epic, pristine and in many places bewilderingly flawed.

Start with the public accommodations near what is called the Coastal Cluster, home to five ice sports arenas and the stadium for the opening ceremony. To appreciate the hotels in this area, it is probably a good idea to think of them not as hotels but rather as a rare opportunity to experience life in a centrally planned, Soviet-style dystopia.