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Saturday, the 22nd - Monday, the 24th

Saturday, the 22nd: Arrival

After we had had quite good luck with our skating travels during the last few events, this time it didn’t go quite that smooth, since the first thing that we found out at the airport was that our flight had been cancelled *oops* So instead of flying directly to Milano, we had to fly to Frankfurt first and take another plane there. Well at least we got to leave right away, so we didn’t lose that much time overall. In Frankfurt our second plane started late, because they had some medical emergency in it, some woman from the flight before ours couldn’t leave the plane without a doctor, so we had to wait in the lounge quite some extra time (luckily Steffi had some playing cards with her :-P). However, due to good wind conditions, the plane nearly arrived in Milano at the planned time anyway. Of course overall we were 2 hours later in Milano than we had planned, luckily we had no other plans for that day but making it to Torino :-P After a 1 hour bus drive from Milano airport to Milano central station, we lluckily managed to get the next train and arrived at Torino at about 6pm. Our hotel seemed quite nice on first view, even if some negative points turned out later :-P First of all there was something wrong with out heater and we couldn’t regulate it, so our room had some similarities with a Finnish sauna and then the noise isolating at the hotel wasn’t that brilliant, because you could hear everything everybody else did on the floor or in the other rooms nearby or outside. But overall it still was a pretty nice hotel. We didn’t go the rink at that first day, just had some dinner at a pizzeria (where I found out that “arrabiata” in Italy is really VERY hot, unlike in Germany where it’s usually just hot :-P and Steffi had her first (but not last :-P) traumatic experience with unwanted tuna fish.

Sunday, the 23rd: Dance practice

We had sworn ourself that when a skating event is finally in some nicer place than Dortmund or Gelsenkirchen, we would take some time to go sightseeing. About a million people had told us beforehand that Torino is an ugly city, but Steffi and I both found it quite nice. Probably none of those people have ever visited towns like Gelsenkirchen :-P We didn’t make any organized attempts at sightseeing, we just walked up Via Roma (lots of exclusive shops) and then walked around the city. We figured out it is very easy to be orientated in Torino, because the roads are all in quadrants. We saw quite some Piazza’s, then coincidentally ended up at Mole Antonelli (which is the tall lit up building that was on the picture behind the Kiss & Cry), which houses a “Cinema museum”, that we visited, it was quite cool. We also took the elevator to the top of the building to get a nice view over the city and at the Alps in the background. Afterwards we had lunch at a nice pizzeria (and like at many other occasions came to the conclusion that paying for your food is a really complicated matter in Italy apparently :-P), walked around some more in some pedestrian precinct and had gelato at an ice cream parlour (eating gelato was another one of our goals for Italy :-P). In the evening we finally took the bus to the Palavela to see our first Free Dance practice. With the help of Sara we had figured out which bus to take and at which stop to get out, but it wasn’t that easy, cause it was dark outside and you never could see the name of the station when the bus stopped and we ended up going too far and having to take another bus back, but we eventually found the rink. None of the visitors’ gates were opened yet, so we had to enter through the gate for accreditated people and the only part of the rink that was open for visitors was very high up in the stands, but it was actually a cool place to watch the Free Dance practice, because the overview was great and it was still not too far away. I also took a lot of photos of nearly all teams. I hadn’t much liked Kulikova & Novikov’s FD on tape, but in practice I really liked it, even if the music cuts are still kind of random, I was really looking forward to see it in competition. I also loved seeing Navka & Kostomarov’s FD in practice, it is so wonderful and I swore to myself that no matter what I would make sure to concentrate on watching their FD properly during the competition this time (cause at Worlds 04 for various reason I had always been unattentive when they skated). Well now after the event is over, I can already say, that I unfortunately failed totally with that resolution again. Maybe next year I am glad I saw K&N and C&S in that practice (even if I wish I hadn’t concentrated on taking so many photos), because those seats were so much better to watch their FD’s than our actual seats, because of the way their programs were constructed. I had read 1 or 2 weeks before Euros that Galit is ill and not training, so I was kind of worried about them even being there, I was more than glad that they were able to compete, even if I don’t think they were 100% in top shape. All of the dance teams already were at that practice, except for the French teams.

Monday, the 24th

I have practically no notes about Monday and I just remember that we had breakfast with Sara :) and then went to watch pairs and dance practice. There will also be some photos from the pairs later. All the Russian teams looked very good and also Sawchenko and Szolkowy. The Bestandigs were a bit disappointing, because she only has some small pink streaks left in her otherwise brown hair (and those really weren’t even noticeable with the hairstyle she wore in the competition). On the other hand Josef Bestandig now has long hair and we thought he looks like German pole vaulter Tim Lobinger. The Free Dance pratice wasn’t bad, I concentrated on watching the programs this time, instead of taking photos. Unfortunately all the teams I like best (C&S, N&K, K&N) plus a few others didn’t show up for that practice session. The only other thing I remember about that afternoon is that that “Which Backstreet Boy is gay?” song was played and it led to great amusement with some of the people sitting near us, LOL.