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European Figure Skating Championships
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All pics on this page © Paola Occhipinti.
Introduction
The European Figure Skating Championships this year brought us to Lausanne,
Switzerland - a city that proclaimed herself the "Olympic Capital", and
that made every effort to remember us that...  even
from the first view that we got of it: this is the station where we arrived...
(more on Lausanne: we did some sightseeing, you can have a look at my
walking
around Lausanne page). Everything organizing this trip was
complicated... we had troubles with the tickets ( we never received the
original ones - if they ever were mailed; thankfully we had some copies
sent to us urgently, just a few days before we were due to leave); we
booked the hotel way in advance, so we had to make a big guess about the
hotel where the skaters were going to stay (a crucial information if we
wanted to try to use the official buses to get to the arena, which was
quite far from everything) - and those who waited for this info had troubles
finding a place, later; I even got sick the day before we were leaving
- I packed my bags feeling really bad, and I'm sure I also had a temperature
- I just didn't measure it because I was afraid of not being allowed to
come... ignorance was my best medicine in this case! (together with all
the pills and syrups I took that nigt and those I brought with me, of
course!). In these conditions I packed the most horrible suitcase I've
ever seen: when I opened it in Lausanne a gasped from the horror! Thankfully
I didn't forget anything crucial, and some important things where already
there: Giovanna had kindly put in her car a couple of bags for me, with
the stuffed toys I had bought almost a year in advance and the cookies
I had made for everyone!
Anyway, finally the day had come: it was very early in the morning of
Tuesday, January the 15th, when Angela and her husband arrived with Emanuele
to pick me up, on the way to the railway station... when we got there
we had a lot of time to wait - something like 1 h. 40 mins! (but it was
still better that being in the middle of Milan's terrible morning traffic,
worrying about missing the train), and then finally Melania arrived too
and we found our platform, and got on the train to seat comfortably and
wait for our new adventure to begin. We had chosen to miss the first day
of competition, which featured just the men's qualifications (but they
were going to perform their free program, so we were going to see that
anyway) and the pairs' short program (which we had followed on tv)...
the thing that interested us most - all the dance competition - was starting
that very same day with the compulsory dances; we were going to miss the
first one because there were no earlier trains,  but
we were going to do everything we could to get at the arena in time to
see the second one! We had a fairly nice travel, chatting, trying to contact
by phone our friends in the arena to know what was happening in the first
compulsory dance, and watching all the mountains and then the lake with
a beautiful sun... until it all went cloudy and grey as soon as we got
near to our final destination! Sigh! At the station Melania and I went
straight to the tourist office to find out how to get to the arena and
to our hotel - and then jumped on the "metro" (they called it like that,
but we have a quite different concept of underground/subway) and got to
Ouchy where out hotel was.
At first we didn't see it (but we immediately found the skaters' hotel
- so it was near to ours, after all) then we found the entrance half-
hiddend under some scaffolding (this left us quite depressed... we had
been thinking about our room facing the lake & us waking up with a nice
sight in front of us for quite a long time...)
but we were too late to investigate any further: we didn't even think
about going to see our room! We did the check in, left our bags at the
reception and ran to the hotel Movempick (we had done the right choice
after all! The two hotels were no more than 100 meters apart!) and jumped
on the official bus right outside the Movempick hotel (the girl at our
reception had told us that we could get that bus - actually we couldn't,
as we later discovered, but in the first couple of days we were lucky
and we always managed to get in!). When we got in Melania was happy to
notice Norman Jeschke sitting there (her next best thing to the injured
René Lohse), and just before the bus left, Gwendal and a prticularly angry
looking Marina got in too; they sight on the other side of the corridor,
not talking to or even looking at each other - but maybe they were just
concentrating. Anyway, Mel and I got into the arena just in time to see
the second compulsory dance.
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Tuesday
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