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Sunday, the 15th: Arrival Day

Sunday, 15. January – Arrival

We started with our usual skating trip tradition, breakfast at McDonalds :P

Both our subway trains had arrived without being late at all, which we unwisingly took as a good sign...Our trip by train to Frankfurt airport went smooth (and was only going to be about one hour) until we were about 10 minutes away from our destination, where our train suddenly stopped at some local train station and didn't continue. After about 15 minutes there was a first announcement in the train, saying that a track had broken in front of us and that the train would be able to continue on a roundabout way at an undeterminable time :scream:

After about another 10 minutes there was another annoucement that passengers could choose to leave the train and try to reach Frankfurt airport on their own if they want. We decided to do that since we figured anything was better than waiting and we thought it wouldn't be hard to get a taxi. Well the first 2 taxis that arrived were taken by other people, who had to catch earlier flights, but we were told there would be more coming in 10 minutes. After waiting about 20 minutes at – 14 degrees Celcius another taxi arrived that we couldn't take, cause our suitcases were too big. After another 20 minutes and numerous calls to the taxi company, finally another taxi arrived that took us to Frankfurt airport (the driver at least was very nice), after we had spend nearly an hour in the cold at the train station in „Groß-Gerau – Dornstadt“. So we were at the airport about exactly an hour before our plane was scheduled to leave. The airport in Frankfurt was totally crowded and chaotic, so we just walked to the next Lufthansa person to ask how to check in as quick as possible, so we were showed to some Quick Check-In automats (were you can check in yourself at a machine, without having to wait in the line). Afterwards we were sent accordingly to the Quick luggage check-in counter, but even with that it took us so long that we arrived at our gate just in time when the boarding was starting (luckily it didn't start in time, but the plane was a bit late). We were very relieved when we finally sat in the plane.

The rest of our trip was much smoother. The Lyon airport was small and uncrowded and we took the shuttle bus to the Perrache train station. The station was rather confusing (since it was big and contained a regular train station, the metro, the tram station, a big bus station, a highway and a big parking house), so we managed to walk around like whole of it before finding our Ibis hotel even though we had already seen it from the bus. Our hotel was nice, a lot better than the one from Torino last year. After checking in, we walked around the pedestrian precinct near the train station a little, found an Italian restaurant nearby (we weren't to crazy about going to a French food restaurant) and had a little dinner at McDonalds :shuffle:

Back in the hotel we met Katja and Susanne, who had arrived by train by now and later took a bus to the Stade the Gerlande, which worked relatively well, even though we ended up getting out one stop too late (but it was better than Torino last year, where we got out about 5 stops to late :P).

After watching some boring men practice session where only Adrian Schultheiss had shown up, we realized that the order of practices must have been changed, since there were only going to be men in the evening, instead of the dance that was written on the practice plan, which was pretty disappointing, especially since in the next group only Zeus from Greece (cute!), Boris Martinec, Trifun Zivanovic and Premyslaw Domanski showed up, so we decided to leave after watching a bit of it. We were however very happy with our seats, which could hardly have been any better, first row behind the boxes, on the long side of the rink. It was about as good as our usual seats in Gelsenkirchen. Steffi and I hung up our ChaSaks and Obertas & Slavnov banners, then in the evening we met at our hotel room, had some Ramazotti and watched a DVD of the Averbukh show 2005 (since you obviously never get to see enough skating at live events :P ). Steffi somehow managed to crash her plastic cup with Ramazotti in her hands and pour the drink all over the floor :D