I felt this keenly last weekend, at the water polo—another insane, compelling pastime that finds its ideal home at the Olympics. As with weightlifting, the imperatives and tactics could not be clearer; the same cannot always be said of the competitors, who famously reserve their most heinous acts for a murky world below the waterline. On the surface, strapping young men and women try to pass the ball and hurl it into the net. Underneath, however, there is a flagrant suspension of the laws that govern not only this particular sport but the entirety of human civilization. London has installed cameras on the bottom of the pool, and occasionally—less often than I would have liked, but probably as often as the organizers dared—we would be granted cutaway shots, screened at the ends of the pool, of what was going on down there. The only thing I can compare it with is the tuna-fishing sequence from Rossellini’s “Stromboli,” when a hundred enraged fish churn, thresh, and wriggle for their lives. If you order the special in one of London’s fish restaurants, over the next fortnight, and find yourself chewing on what appears to be a shred of bathing cap, maybe in the colors of Australia, don’t say a word. Just swallow and carry on.

The match I saw was Hungary versus Serbia, which was not, let us say, the least impassioned contest of the Games. Hungary has won the men’s event at the past three Olympics, but the Serbs are the current world champions; even though this was only a game at the group stage, with no question of a knockout, much was therefore at stake. The Hungarian contingent of supporters was in especially brazen fettle, with young women wearing their national flag as a full-length dress. Face paint was by no means confined to the face. Lusty chanting broke out at the slightest provocation. And here’s the thing: I was right behind them. What tipped the balance, I cannot say—although one naturally inclines towards any sports team which features a goalkeeper named Szecsi and a goalscorer named Gergely Kiss—but I decided, with no previous convictions, that for the next half-hour or so (each game comprises four quarters of eight minutes each), I would become an honorary resident of Budapest. Had my own country been performing, I would have been no more ardent—a touch less so, perhaps, for I would have felt stirred by charity, sympathy, and other lukewarm emotions, whereas the innate Hungarian rage for water polo was able to raise me, however briefly, to boiling point, and my plangent mid-European desolation, when my adopted team lost 10-14 to the Serbs, was such that I almost sent out for a violin.

Instead, I had a Big Mac. As I sprinted through a furious lashing of rain towards the golden arches, I had my only Proustian spasm of the Games so far; had I not done precisely the same in China, seeking both sustenance and shelter from the elements in the embrace of medium fries? To be sure, there were other parallels; in both capitals, the tone has been set by the massed ranks of volunteers who act as a benign antidote to the glum bureaucracy of the International Olympic Committee, and who spring up at every turn to shepherd you towards your destination. If anything, London has the edge, in that many of the volunteers are not eager teen-agers but slightly calmer middle-aged men and women who display as much kindly common sense as can reasonably be expected from anyone forced to wear purple and pink—or, as it was chillingly labelled by one commentator, “cerise.” For more honorable cladding, you must head to the entrance to the Olympic Park, now staffed by soldiers, who have filled the shoes that were ignominiously vacated, at the last gasp, by the bumbling security firm G4S; my bag was searched by a vast member of the Parachute Regiment, who may or may not be moonlighting as a substitute on the British basketball squad, but with whom, I can safely say, it would be very unwise to mess.

The main disparity with Beijing lies in the matter of landscape. Nothing can compete with the Bird’s Nest—the stadium constructed by the Chinese as if they were attempting to house all of Luxemburg—but for homelier and more verdant sites, they are nudged out by the Brits. Wiggins and his rivals pedalled today past swathes of bright green, as you might on a weekend spin, and, for those specialist visitors who wouldn’t dream of going to the Games without a horse, London has busted out all over. The Sha Tin equestrian venue, in 2008, wasn’t even in mainland China, but in Hong Kong, a flight away, whereas this week’s show jumping took place in Greenwich Park, opposite the City of London, as bushy a demonstration of rus in urbe as you could hope for; Olympians had to duck down under trees as they galloped towards the next obstacle, headless riders being disallowed by the stringent anti-ghost sections of the Olympic code, and, in one shot, which the BBC did not tire of repeating, the riders jumped through a crescent moon, while the towers of the City of London rose and glowered in the distance.

All this was most irregular, in that it gave Londoners increasingly little to moan about. Outrage over unused seats, it is true, continues unabated, and, until today, Britain had no gold medals; but the latter was wholly predictable, “home advantage” being even more of a myth than “home interest.” In other ways, though, the Games threaten to function with an ominous smoothness; the new Javelin train, which spirits visitors from a central rail station to the gates of the Olympic park, takes six minutes to complete its journey, whereas many British trains squall to a leisurely halt whenever snow, leaves, or persons unknown fall onto the track. The novel sensation reached its apogee as I took a train out of London, heading southwest, after the water polo. Early-evening flooding was provided by sunlight, not rain, and, in my car, a sprightly chatter broke out among strangers, as we discussed the Olympic events that we had already attended and worked ourselves into a minor frenzy over those that were yet to come. It is hard to convey the unprecedented nature of this scene, for, like the rules of weightlifting, the principles that suffuse human contact on British trains are both rigid and explicit: you can enter into conversation with the man sitting opposite you, but only if his hair is on fire.

Needless to say, such benevolence cannot last; a week of possible disgruntlements over track and field should see to that. For the moment, however, one’s sentiments are broadly in line with those of Zoe Smith, the weightlifter, who had been baited and bullied on social networks during the runup to the Games, for being a diminutive young woman in a burly sport. After her competition, she took on the trolls, reminding them that she had just taken part at the Olympics, where she had lifted twice her own body weight, and asking, “What are you doing with your life?” Good question.

See our full coverage of the Games at The Olympic Scene.

Photograph by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images.