Let’s say you’re Moscow and years ago you proudly hosted the Olympic Games. You prepared for what seemed ages. You had to construct new arenas, venues to accommodate sports-men and -women from around the world.

The competitors, spectators, journalists descended and there was a hectic blur from opening to closing ceremony. Olympic records, world records, victory and defeat. All right here, in the places you had prepared.

But then everyone went home and you were left with bleacher seats to sweep and monumental buildings always echoing with the world’s applause, more spacious than all of your best athletes combined could ever require.

So what do you do with these empty spaces? You could knock them down, construct housing for your booming population, but these buildings are a source of pride. No, instead you come up with a solution that allows you to keep the structures without wasting the space. Never mind that it is somehow shameless, somehow a perversion of the Olympic spirit.

You fill them with discount stores.

Today, I went into one of these discount stores and bought myself a little teacup and saucer on which is printed (after a string of nonsense with words like sfeel where they meant street and astwalked where they meant, well, something), “be no Christmas for me, I struggled through homeless.” I liked how that fit with the bright yellow flowers, and how it was being sold in the tackiest Olympic stadium I can imagine.

Even if there will be no Christmas for me, I had a very good day, getting to know my neighbor Taylor (a Rotary scholar) better. We had an Office party in the evening, and sometimes a little American programming with your fellow-countrywoman is all you need here.

Olympic photo album