Ode To Mandostan

So basically this is one of the most amazing stories I've ever heard:

A friend of a friend of mine was a volunteer worker at the Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy a few years ago. After a disagreement with their boss, however, he and his friends quit, but still kept their volunteer access passes. They then went to a bar, and started to brainstorm what they could possibly pull off with such useful equiptment...

What did they do? They invented a country.

They designed a simple, typical third-world-looking flag for the small and newly independant, but proud, country of "Mandostan" (similar to an italian expression, "ma andò stà ‘sto?", which literally means "but where is that?"). They made a bunch of shirts and caps with the logo emblazoned on it, and went to check-in as the Mandostan Ski Team. It worked.

They then spent the next few days (or two weeks, depending on which story you adhere to) partying into the wee hours of the morning in the Olympic Village with such famous atheletes as Bode Miller. (I have seen the pictures. He is wearing a Mandostan t-shirt and our friend still has his sunglasses). Oh, and apparently the phrase "party like a rockstar" should be changed to "party like an olympic athelete." There was one medalist who stayed up till 5am doing lines of coke before competing the next day.

Sure, eventually all the atheletes realized that these people never seemed to be training and were from an entirely fictional country, but they liked hanging out with them so much that they totally played along with it. It has even been rumored that a BBC reporter, not wanting to seem ignorant, interviewed one of our proud Mandostani citizens about how he felt about an upcoming competition.



You really can't beat that.