Sorry, no Games here.

People usually have something to say when they hear that we live in Lugano – often, "Oh, that great jazz festival" or "Wasn't there some sort of peace treaty signed there?" or "[sigh] That place is paradise, I tell you, paradise." (Sorry Franklin College, no one seems to know that you exist.)

Close behind these topics in the Lugano stream of consciousness is the Olympics. People have mentioned it so many times that it started to sound really probable to me. I began jumping into these conversations enthusiastically – "oh yes, I've heard this! I think there must have been some events here one year!"

But today my desire for certainty overcame the hypnotic power of hearsay and I looked it up. World Olympics Lugano: 28,400 results. World Olympics Salt Lake City: 2,320,000. I find nothing that mentions events in or around Lugano. But based on the list of previous events, I have some theories about why we all think this:

1. Turin 2006. Torino is not so far away, really. Zoom out a world map a couple of times and they're practically on top of each other.

2. Lillehammer 2004. Another cute little European town that seems really familiar for no real reason.

3. Nagano 1998. Nagano. Lugano. Nagano. Lugano.

4. St. Moritz 1928 & 1948. How did this tiny Swiss town (just a four hour bus ride from Lugano) get the honor twice? They stole hosting rights the second time from Sapporo, Japan. That place doesn't even know how to make beer, the Swiss pointed out, how can it host the Olympics? Let's bring them here for our tasty Feldschlössen. (Germany had offered up Garmisch-Partenkirchen once again, but let's just say their beer wasn't very popular at this time in history either.) (Full story here.)

I therefore conclude that one of more of these factors has created a collective false memory about the Olympics being in Lugano. But I do hope that someone can somehow prove me wrong about this. I'm not really looking forward to disappointing most of the rest of the world. No one likes that person.