It’s a sentiment that echoed across Britain, and beyond, as the Olympics came to a close. “There’s nothing to watch now!” says 80-year-old Dorothy Aylott, strolling by London’s Tate Museum a few days after the Games finished. She and two friends, Pat Stickley and Valerie Weatherhead, both 82, were on their weekly visit to the metropolis from the suburb of Chessington. “I thought it was great,” says Stickley. “We feel something’s missing.”

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The press has dubbed this low the “post-Olympic withdrawal.” On Tuesday, the Times of London ran an editorial listing “the top dozen” symptoms of the ailment, which includes saying everything twice, “first time in French.” Others have proposed possible cures: on Monday, Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson begged for an Olympic patch that “provides a steady controlled dose of euphoria throughout the day.” Even those with no obvious connection to sports or London have taken up the lament. “It’s like the day after Christmas,” wrote Jessica Morgan of Los Angeles–based fashion blog Go Fug Yourself, which tracked the Olympic stylings of the royal family during the Games. “It feels like the end of fun. Forever.”

So why did the Olympics give so many people such a boost? There are, of course, the obvious answers: national pride swells whenever a country’s athlete can swim faster, jump higher or pedal more furiously than anybody else on the planet. For Britain, there is the added sense that — despite much pre-Olympic doom mongering in the press — London hosted a successful Games. (“Didn’t We Do Well!” crowed the bellwether tabloid Daily Express, the day after the Games ended, striking a note of self-congratulation that may come easily to the Express, but not to the British at large.)

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But the true power of the Olympics, social psychologists say, lies not in medal counts and flag waving, which every participating country indulges in, but in the feeling of community those activities create. “During the Olympics, we get the sense that we’re all in it together,” says Stephen Reicher, professor of social psychology at the University of St. Andrews. As a consequence, he says, we’re more likely to help and support others, and expect others to do the same. “That leads to an optimism, a confidence, a belief that you can deal with the challenges of life.” As many have noted, this led to unusual displays at the Olympic Park, including spontaneous high fives between strangers, endless friendly banter from park volunteers and even a group of normally staid London bobbies striking Usain Bolt’s signature lightning pose en masse for giggling tourists.

Social psychologists call this bubbling collective excitement “effervescence.” Émile Durkheim, the 19th century French sociologist who coined the term, wrote that when people enter this state, “the vital energies become hyperexcited, the passions more intense, the sensations more powerful,” adding that man “feels somehow transformed and in consequence transforms his surroundings.” That certainly sounds like the mood inside Olympic venues, where the jubilant roar from the crowd regularly exceeded 100 decibels and topped out at 140 — the equivalent of a jetliner taking off — after British cyclist Victoria Pendleton pedaled to gold in the velodrome.

Now that Britain has experienced two weeks of nonstop effervescence, it wants to figure out how to bottle it for an inevitable rainy day. There have been talks of mass volunteerism to capitalize on the goodwill generated by the unpaid Games Makers. Others have pushed for expanding sports programs in schools.

But in light of social psychology, it would appear that simply doing things together is the important thing. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s in a knitting club or a bridge club or a running club,” says Reicher. “Participating together with others, working together with others, having a sense of ‘us-ness’ with others is good for our health and well-being.”

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Unfortunately, this may be the one thing contemporary society is not well equipped to foster. And when it does, it can go awry. Last year in London, swaths of the city were wracked by riots as marginalized communities felt a sense of effervescence in achieving their collective goal: sticking it to the police. And a year later, the cracks are already showing in the post-Olympic discourse of unity, as debates about the educational background of British Olympic athletes expose old divides in British society.

Still, despite the pitfalls, some Brits seem to have already intuited the valuable lessons that might be drawn from the Games. The octogenarian ladies from Chessington not only enjoy days out in London together — they also have joint athletic pursuits as well. “We swim once a week,” says Weatherhead when asked about her friends’ interest in sports. “Though unfortunately not to an Olympic standard.”

“They won!” she exclaimed outside the Riverbank Stadium, as she raised her fists triumphantly over her head and hopped from one foot to the other. Down from Bedfordshire, England, for the day with her parents, she could barely contain her exuberance. Already a swimmer and a tennis player, Eloise said she’s all set to add hockey to her athletic repertoire after seeing the game. “I’m playing when I’m older when I go to girls school,” she said with excited determination, holding out the edges of her flag-turned-cape.

While her enthusiasm in the wake of an Olympic match might seem predictable, it has actually become increasingly uncommon for school-age girls in Britain to show gusto for sports. According to a recent survey by the Women’s Sports and Fitness Foundation (WSFF), nearly half of boys and girls polled said they felt “there are more opportunities for boys to succeed in sport than girls.” Of the girls surveyed, 43 percent said that women role models in sport were hard to come by.

Other figures show that less than one percent of commercial sponsorship goes to women’s sports, compared to the 61 percent that goes to men’s, and British media devotes only five percent of its coverage to women athletes. So it’s not hard to understand why the siren call of sport isn’t as alluring for girls as it is for boys.

Yet London 2012 might inspire a shift in attitude. With the introduction of women’s boxing, this year’s games mark the first time in history that women have competed in every event at the Olympics. What’s more, it’s the first time every participating country has sent women athletes, which has led some to dub London 2012 the “Women’s Games.”

And in Britain, in particular, women athletes have been front and center. Heptathlon star Jessica Ennis has practically been the face of London 2012, with plenty of advertising deals and media coverage. Swimmers Rebecca Adlington and Keri-Anne Payne, and cyclist Victoria Pendleton, have also received similar exposure. And once the competitions kicked off, rowers Heather Stanning and Helen Glover put women athletes on the map when they won Team GB’s first gold of the games.

All of which might have something to do with why the Olympics have little girls so fired up. Nine-year-old Caty Salter and her seven-year-old sister Rachel were eager to talk hockey strategy with me after the Netherlands-China game. “I was kinda cheering for China,” confessed Caty as she adjusted the strap of her pink backpack, rather than the crowd-favorite Netherlands. Bespectacled Rachel, whose excited smile revealed she’d recently lost a few baby teeth, confirmed she’d also been rooting for the Chinese team because she wanted Team GB to face weaker competition in the quarterfinals. “So it will help us win,” she explained.

When asked if they knew that London 2012 marks the first time that women have been allowed to compete in all the sports, Caty looked dubious. “No,” she answered hesitantly, like she didn’t believe it. Then again, why should she? She was still buzzed after the game and ready to talk about her own sporting career. “There’re quite a few sports I play actually,” she said, ticking them off on her fingers. “Hockey is one of them. I’ve done cross-country. I quite like football as well. And, oh yes, there’s gymnastics as well.” Will she be competing in the Olympics one day? “I hope so,” she said. For either hockey — her favorite — or perhaps gymnastics.

Then there was blonde-haired, six-year-old Sophie Lindsay, who despite being shy was dressed from head to toe in Team GB garb and had Union Jack stickers plastered all over her cheeks. Down from Bath to watch some events with her dad Trevor, she was disappointed about not being able to get tickets to her favorite event: equestrian cross-country. She’s been riding her horse, Sparky, since she was two years old and had been hoping to see Team GB, which features four women riders and only one man, compete the day before. When I asked her if she thought she’d be riding for Team GB one day instead of watching them, her dad laughed. Sophie, however, looked me straight in the eye and spoke with complete seriousness.

“Yes.”

The pop-up restaurant, known as the “Bernese Chalet,” is just one part of the House of Switzerland, a sprawling, 3,000-square-meter complex open to the public until the end of the Paralympic Games on September 9th. A four-story building at the center of the complex houses a private lounge for Swiss athletes, a room of video games designed by Swiss firms, and a coffee bar that turns into a disco called “Le Club.” Outside, a make-shift market square includes a live stage, where Swiss musicians and pop stars perform every evening, and a climbing wall sponsored by Mammut, the Swiss company known for its mountain climbing equipment.

It’s all meant to give the neutral European nation a PR boost during the Olympic games. “If you look at studies that we’ve conducted in Britain, we know that Brits love us,” says Nicolas Bideau, the head of the Swiss government’s public diplomacy unit. “But they also consider us a bit closed, selfish and not very sympathetic or creative. This is exactly what the House is fighting against.”

Switzerland isn’t alone with its branding exercise. At least 18 foreign governments have rented buildings and erected pavillions hoping to showcase their culture and potential business opportunities during the Olympics. The Czech House, open daily from 10am until midnight, offers guests plenty of Czech dumplings and the opportunity to purchase the official Czech Olympic uniforms. There’s also a mechanical installation of a London bus from famed Czech artist David Cerny. It does push-ups and has human buttocks. The Dutch House, which has earned a reputation over the past two decades for late-night revelry, is sponsored by Heineken and closes at 2am. Given the clubby atmosphere, no one under 18 is allowed in unaccompanied after 8pm.

Bigger countries hope to benefit too. Russia, which will host the winter Olympic games in Sochi in two years, sees putting on a good show as a way of boosting anticipation of its forthcoming games. “Everybody recongnizes that the modern Olympic games are the most recongnized and successful non-commercial brand in the world,” says Dmitry Chernyshenko, chief executive of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. So his team has set up Russia Park and Sochi Park—two massive pavillions inside London’s Hyde Park.

The latter includes a nightly ice skating spectacular that stars six Olympic champions and 18 world champions — all of them Russian. In one of the more camp moments of the show, 2002 Olympic figure skating champion Aleksey Yagudin does spins in front of a digitized roulette wheel while a series of skaters dressed as dice and playing cards twirl around him. Before entering the ice skating arena, visitors, who have forked out $30 each for tickets, must pass through a series of rooms that feature virtual reality bobsled rides. At the start of the tour, Tatiana Navka, an Olympic champion ice dancer, appears on a floor-to-ceiling projection. “We have the energy for growth and celebrate the opportunity for positive transformation,” she says. “That’s my Russia!”

For Switzerland, which doesn’t exactly have a blemished human rights record, there’s less need to hit guests over the head with glitz and glamour and overt posturing. So the Swiss organizers, who have a budget of $4.6 million, opted to showcase the quirky. Visitors compete in traditional Swiss sports—like cheese rolling and alpine horn blowing—in the market square adjacent to the house. And a recent concert included Swiss pop act Boy, a group made up of two girls. They celebrate their country’s better-known exports, too. Among the most popular stalls is from the chocolate gurus at Lindor. “It’s a massive draw,” says chocolatier Dean Turner. “It brings lots of city people in, and they get to taste something quintessentially Swiss.”

Best of all, the House of Switzerland is free. “We want everyone to enter, ” says Bideau. “We’re an open house. We’re an open country.”

Johnson was the first person to take a turn on a zip wire above Victoria Park, London, where the Games are being shown on large screens, when he lost momentum. The mayor, who is considered a serious contender to take over from British Prime Minister David Cameron as leader of the Conservative Party, was left dangling somewhat gracelessly for five minutes.

Wearing a hard hat, and two Union Jack flags in hand, Johnson made light of the situation. He told onlookers: “This is great fun but it needs to go faster,”  and later asked them to “Get me a rope, get me a ladder.”

Within minutes, his mishap went viral. Videos of the mayor in suspension quickly circulated and Twitter has been inundated with images of him superimposed onto various London landmarks, including dangling from one of the hands of  Big Ben, from an Olympic ring on Tower Bridge, and at the Olympic Ceremony, suspended in space.

He’s also gained a firm fan in CNN host Piers Morgan, who tweeted: “Boris Johnson’s got London in terrific order for the  #Olympics and he’s making us all laugh. I think it’s time he was Prime Minister.”

Meanwhile, his journalist sister Rachel joked on Twitter that “he has won gold in the flying coxless wedgie.”

A spokesman for Johnson has since commented: “The Mayor has survived his first zip-wire experience relatively unscathed. Clearly the judges will rightly be marking him down for artistic impression and it is unlikely he’ll be taking any gold medals home today. But he remains unbowed.”

The 4-day project, entitled Hatwalk, is the brainchild of London mayor Boris Johnson. It’s part of a group of works, including a life-size inflatable Stonehenge, he’s dreamed up to encourage Londoners and visitors to “look at and experience the city in a different way.” Hatwalk was curated by celebrity milliners Philip Treacy (the man responsible for Princess Beatrice’s “pretzel” hat at the royal wedding) and Stephen Jones, best known for his work with Versace and Jean-Paul Gaultier. Treacy and Jones built hats for the project and rounded up other British milliners to join in. The other London statues to receive a fancy chapeau include Winston Churchill, Sir Arthur Sullivan, notorious dandy Beau Brummell and anti-slavery campaigner Charles James Fox, who’s swapped pigeon poo for a big bonnet by milliner Pip Hackett.

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Lord Nelson’s hat, which was hoisted 169 feet in the air with a crane and plonked into place in the dead of night (to preserve the surprise) was designed by the same firm, Lock & Co., that created his headgear 200 years ago. With a total of six hats on display in the vicinity of Trafalgar Square, the area is the epicenter of Mayor Boris’ inventive little prank.

Some in the square had come especially to look at the hats and approved of the project. Alan and Christina Holmes, a middle-aged couple from Lincolnshire who are in London to watch the Olympic ladies’ hockey, plan to see all the hats dotted across the city. They have stopped to take a picture of Sir Charles Napier, a Victorian sea captain, wearing a translucent creation meant to represent his galleon tossed on the high seas. Mr. Holmes says the project is “typical” of Mayor Johnson’s style. “He’s not frightened to do something outlandish.”

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Lord Nelson’s patriotic hat also seems to meet with approval, with a patrolling policeman saying that that he would swap it with his helmet. “He has a thing for three corner hats,” explains a fellow officer. A visitor decked out in head-to-toe Olympic garb, Londoner Mary Oatey, says she prefers Nelson’s gear because it features the Olympic torch.

Others, however, are not as impressed by the millinery offerings. A group of four young Danish men visiting London for the Games describe Philip Treacy’s iridescent disc on Sir Henry Havelock’s head as “rubbish.” “It looks like a satellite dish,” says Thomas Vestergaard.

A group of visiting American evangelists also have reservations about the project. “I think it’s tacky,” says Texan Dorothy Boyett, who is visiting London with fellow believers to preach in the street during the Olympics. “It looks like something some college students did.” Boyett had been ministering to the crowd through a loudspeaker earlier in the day and had taken a break to look at the hats. “It doesn’t look dignified,” she says. “It would look much better if Princess Beatrice or Eugenie were to wear them.”

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With only 100,000 foreign visitors expected over the next few weeks, compared to the usual 300,000, the capital will offer plenty of discounts as businesses scramble to make up the lost numbers at hotels, restaurants, theaters and gyms.

Hosting the Summer Games was supposed to bring in an additional $20 billion in economic activity, but the tourist industry hasn’t seen it yet, with some areas of London resembling a ghost town. Part of the problem is that no one knew quite what to expect over these few weeks, and firms have suffered as a result. “We’re bleeding, darling,” Nica Burns, chief executive of Nimax Theatres, told the Financial Times.

Others are more interested in putting a positive spin on it. The Dutch boutique hotel chain citizenM opened its first London branch, close to the Tate Modern, in July. While the hotel’s focus on the well-traveled has meant that it has not offered any Olympic-related discounts, it has recognized the need to do something about the elephant in the room, as well as the need to capture the Olympic audience. “It would be very stupid not to do anything related with the Olympics,” says Robin Chadha, its chief marketing officer and co-founder of the brand. “London is such a dynamic city — we asked ourselves what we could do to make our hotel relevant during that period, how we can capture that.” The result, citizenM Reports, is a platform for “citizen journalists” to document collectively the goings-on in London on its microsite — “everything but sport” as its tagline goes. It’s also holding a series of talks and workshops, including one on alternative London street sports.

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For citizenM, however, this is a marathon and not a sprint. The impact of the Olympics over the next fortnight is not so important as the goal to establish a base with customers likely to return, unlike, of course, the typical Olympic visitor. For the well-established hotels in London, it’s a different picture. Lastminute.com, the website offering deals and discounts on everything from hotels to spa days, has reported “Olympic fever” and described the hotel availability during the Games as “relatively healthy.” Hotel rates have been cut by up to almost a fifth, with many customers paying an average of just $131.64 for four-star London hotels.

It may only be temporary blessing, but there are many deals to be had in London’s Theatreland as well. Francis Hellyer, the managing director of londontheatredirect.com, says, “The last few days have been unique. We’re taking 50% less bookings than we were this time last year, but there are lots of last-minute deals available. Our website has the largest list of discounts we’ve had at any one time.” Even shows like Chariots of Fire, which could be expected to do well given its sporting theme, is offering discounted tickets.

Hellyer was also keen to point out theater and dinner options, with some tickets giving theatergoers a free three-course meal. Like Theatreland and the high-end hotels, restaurants too have been affected. Celebrity hangouts like The Ivy are notoriously difficult to get into, but check online, or call on the day, and getting a table for 8 p.m. is not unlikely. Caprice Holdings, which owns The Ivy and J Sheekey, are keen to portray the image of business as usual: “Our regular, loyal customers are also very much still booking and dining with us during the Olympic period,” says Jo James, director of sales and marketing for the group. Nevertheless, it’s offering nearly a 50% discount during its prime-time after-theater spot: steak frites and a glass of wine for $31.35 from 10:15 p.m. onward. Opening hours have also been extended in many of its restaurants.

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For Londoners and visitors alike, it’s a win-win situation. With museums and art galleries also reporting a 30% to 35% attendance drop during this period, London’s finest attractions can be enjoyed in relative quiet. The capital may still be abuzz with Olympic fever, but for those who’ve missed out on Olympic tickets and are wishing to take advantage of the many deals around, London is still open for business.

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Perhaps Hollande is a graceless winner; French swimmers have been dominant in the pool and the country is third in the medal count. Or a sore loser; Paris had been the favorite candidate city to host the 2012 Games, but was beaten by London in the final round of voting. Paris had previously lost out to Beijing in a bid to host the 2008 Games.

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Whatever the case, he was careful to avoid alienating the Brits quite as much as U.S. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who described some of the preparations for the Games as “disconcerting” shortly before he visited London last week. “The London Olympics have been very well organized,” Hollande said. “I’m not here to be a killjoy or to give lessons to the British. It’s not worthy of France.”

But the controversy continues, Gallic provocation or not. Lord Colin Moynihan, chairman of the British Olympic Association, has urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to take responsibility for organizing ticketing in future Games, to prevent a repeat of this year’s seating fiasco. He told the Financial Times: “The IOC have now got to take a lead and make sure that investment is in place for a state of the art Olympic ticketing program that can then be improved…from Games to Games.”

Television coverage has repeatedly revealed, much to the dismay of fans who failed to obtain tickets, some venues to be only partially full. Members of the British military, who only weeks ago had stepped in when security firm G4S failed to provide sufficient numbers of security staff, were again drafted in—this time to make up the numbers in the stands, alongside teachers and schoolchildren. During the women’s gymnastics team qualifying, for example, dozens of uniformed men sat bunched together in some of the best seats in the house.

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A survey by the Daily Telegraph found that over 12,000 seats, most of which had been reserved for the “Olympic family”—in other words, accredited media, IOC official and sponsors—have remained unfilled. (This figure did not include football stadiums, where some matches saw up to tens of thousands of empty seats.)

LOCOG, the organizing committee for the London Games, revealed on Monday that that it had reclaimed 3,000 unused tickets that had been returned by sports federations, which they then sold to the public overnight. The organizers also plan to meet with the IOC and sporting federations each evening of the Games to determine what blocks of tickets can go back on sale.

Jackie Brock-Doyle, a spokesman for LOCOG, said: “We are doing this session by session, talking to the accredited groups including obviously broadcast media and everybody else, and asking whether we can release for the different sessions tickets back into the public pot.”

While LOCOG will request that accredited groups return unused tickets, those ticket-holders will not be forced to do so. The IOC also plans to give up seats in accredited areas where possible.

Nonetheless, there are persisting complaints over the difficulties of actually purchasing a ticket. The online transaction system has been criticized as complicated and time-consuming, taking up to two hours to complete. The most common complaint has been of tickets for certain events being shown as available, but when customers attempted to purchase them, they were unable to make a transaction, and the tickets seemingly vanished.

Frustration over the Olympic ticketing system has also spread to the parents of competitors, some of whom have been refused entry to watch their children perform in a number of venues, including the aquatics center, Wimbledon and the rowing center at Eton Dorney, even though plenty of seats were available. Every athlete is entitled to two tickets for relatives and friends for the events they compete in. However, they must go through the Ticketmaster ticket system used by LOCOG, which was not updated to allow competing athletes to obtain tickets for their loved ones in time for the final of some events.