Hi All,
I wanted to let you know that I'm here, but haven't made it to the rink yet . . .
I left Vancouver at about 5:00am on Wednesday for the drive to Seattle to catch my flight and was feeling great. I think I was still running on adrenelin from the excitment of the Olympics! Both the flights from Seattle to Chicago and Chicago to Munich were great and I managed a good sleep on the 2nd flight. (of course, that's partially because even with the really cheap fare I got I had managed to upgrade to business class :thumbsup: ).
Things went downhill a bit once I got the Munich train station to discover that the train I had booked was delayed by 40 minutes which also meant that I would miss my connecting train to Ljubljana. I got everything sorted out, spent a few hours exploring Munich train station and drinking w-a-y too many very good espresso's & pastries. The train trip, especially going through the mountains around Salzburg, was lovely and I arrived in Ljubljana at 9:45pm on Thursday. My original train would have had me here at about 6pm.
I arrived at my hotel (M Hotel - downtown) only to discover that myself and a bunch of other journalists and some chaperones had been moved to the Moens Hotel. The Moens is a very nice hotel but it's in the middle of a HUGE park. They have an hourly shuttle service during the day to/from downtown and also will have a special shuttle for us to get to/from the rink --we'll have to let time tell how well it will work (I'm not really optomistic). At the least, it will probably curtail my socializing a bit :disapp:
The 'special shuttle' then took us to the Lev Hotel for accreditation, which went very well. Gregor Urbas was there and I had a nice chat with him -- he's volunteering here and will be heading to Calgary for Worlds on the 16th.
Back to the hotel and time for bed. By this time my throat is VERY scratchy, I'm coughing a bunch and my head is very stuffed up. . . not a good sign. The signs were right . . . I woke up Friday morning with a horrible cold. I headed off for breakfast -- a lovely buffet (included with the room) with almost everything you could imagine including the most wonderful 'natural' fresh orange juice that is pink! After eating a little and downing 3 glasses of that orange juice I decided that I should stay in my room Friday and sleep and try to get rid of the worst of the cold before the competition starts.
One very good thing about the hotel is the free internet in the room, so at the very least I'll be able to post reports at the end of the day. Once I check out the rink I'll know what kind of internet access is available and whether I'll be able to post reports from there.
It's now 3am here on Saturday morning and after sleeping away pretty much all of Friday I'm feeling MUCH better, so I think my plan worked . . . I'm off to bed again for a few hours and then will be heading to the rink for practises.
I wanted to let you know that I'm here, but haven't made it to the rink yet . . .
I left Vancouver at about 5:00am on Wednesday for the drive to Seattle to catch my flight and was feeling great. I think I was still running on adrenelin from the excitment of the Olympics! Both the flights from Seattle to Chicago and Chicago to Munich were great and I managed a good sleep on the 2nd flight. (of course, that's partially because even with the really cheap fare I got I had managed to upgrade to business class :thumbsup: ).
Things went downhill a bit once I got the Munich train station to discover that the train I had booked was delayed by 40 minutes which also meant that I would miss my connecting train to Ljubljana. I got everything sorted out, spent a few hours exploring Munich train station and drinking w-a-y too many very good espresso's & pastries. The train trip, especially going through the mountains around Salzburg, was lovely and I arrived in Ljubljana at 9:45pm on Thursday. My original train would have had me here at about 6pm.
I arrived at my hotel (M Hotel - downtown) only to discover that myself and a bunch of other journalists and some chaperones had been moved to the Moens Hotel. The Moens is a very nice hotel but it's in the middle of a HUGE park. They have an hourly shuttle service during the day to/from downtown and also will have a special shuttle for us to get to/from the rink --we'll have to let time tell how well it will work (I'm not really optomistic). At the least, it will probably curtail my socializing a bit :disapp:
The 'special shuttle' then took us to the Lev Hotel for accreditation, which went very well. Gregor Urbas was there and I had a nice chat with him -- he's volunteering here and will be heading to Calgary for Worlds on the 16th.
Back to the hotel and time for bed. By this time my throat is VERY scratchy, I'm coughing a bunch and my head is very stuffed up. . . not a good sign. The signs were right . . . I woke up Friday morning with a horrible cold. I headed off for breakfast -- a lovely buffet (included with the room) with almost everything you could imagine including the most wonderful 'natural' fresh orange juice that is pink! After eating a little and downing 3 glasses of that orange juice I decided that I should stay in my room Friday and sleep and try to get rid of the worst of the cold before the competition starts.
One very good thing about the hotel is the free internet in the room, so at the very least I'll be able to post reports at the end of the day. Once I check out the rink I'll know what kind of internet access is available and whether I'll be able to post reports from there.
It's now 3am here on Saturday morning and after sleeping away pretty much all of Friday I'm feeling MUCH better, so I think my plan worked . . . I'm off to bed again for a few hours and then will be heading to the rink for practises.
