There are no problems, just jobs. Therefore there also is no fatigue, just an urgent need for sleep. While all that can be resolved, day 1 in the Otto Bock workshop first needs to be documented. Describing it as eventful would be a total understatement. Paralympic fever really started to set in at Frankfurt Airport, where the national teams from Spain, Mexico and Poland were waiting for their respective flights. The German team left a few hours later. We may hear more about their unedifying journey later on when the athletes themselves get a chance to tell us what exactly was going on. Currently all we have is a rumour that the flight had to turn back in the vicinity of Moscow on its way to Beijing via Munich. That does not sound good.

The flight with orthopedic technicians from Germany and the Low Countries landed in Beijing on schedule at 6:20 am. Colleagues from Korea and New Zealand arrived in the course of the day. Setting up the workshop, which was still choked with numerous crates from two shipping containers, commenced at 10:00 am. It would not have been possible to start any earlier. First the area used as a canteen during the Olympic Games had to be converted. So far everything is going as planned; even the installation of the internet connection, which is usually full of surprises, succeeded at first try.

IPC president Sir Phil Craven even came to the workshop right on the first day in order to see how things were going with IPC cooperation partner Otto Bock during a brief initial visit. Certainly an eventful day.

Gunter Schumann locked up the workshop at 7:00 pm, only to open it up again at 7:01 pm - the team had intended to go for supper together: An Iranian and a Chinese successfully used their combined charm in order to convince Klaus-Peter von Ohlen to solve their tire problems - sorry, I mean to handle their tire job. The heck with it. There is no hunger, just a delay of food intake. Even though the technician hadn't slept for 30 hours by this time and everyone was ravenously hungry.

Zhen Xiaozhen, more or less the head workshop representative as manager of the organization committee BOCOG, told us that a report about Otto Bock and technical service at the Paralympics ran on Chinese television the day before we even arrived. This may be another reason why we saw a totally surprising and just about unbelievable rush of TV, radio and newspaper teams on day 1, the likes of which an Otto Bock workshop has probably never experienced before. You couldn't even count the number of television cameras in all that confusion. Of course the main reason for the crowd was Deng Yaping, the table tennis legend who is full of beans and has become something like a deputy mayor for this village which is home to 4.000 athletes. And she had a gaggle of journalists in tow, for whom the Paralympic Village is usually off limits but who now had an opportunity to document the Paralympics behind the scenes to their heart's content.

Hong Geng, fortunately bilingual with a knowledge of German and Chinese and acting as a go-between and interpreter for Otto Bock, was radiant as though she was at a New Year's Eve party when she later found her photo next to Chinese superstar Deng Yaping in her e-mail. Sometimes making people happy is easy. So many unexpected things happen in life. On the way back to the workshop from lunch, which was too early according to German time, too late by the time in China and therefore probably exactly right, we crossed paths with Urs Kolly, Swiss pentathlete and the first competitor in the long jump to make his prosthesis the takeoff leg. Between walk lights at an intersection, he told us he came to Beijing two days before the Paralympic Village opened. (Fortunately these are the streets with the least traffic in all of Beijing.) He temporarily lived in a hotel. Now he has moved in with his team of course, into this "village" that really looks more like an inviting, modern metropolitan district and still radiates composure on its first day after opening.