Journal

Another month is over and we literally feel as if time flies. About a year ago, we had our last competition to date when we skated at the World Championships in Torino, and even though our results last year didn't lead to much placement-wise, we still think that the past year has made us stronger. By saying this, we're not primarily referring to the countless hours of technique training or the fitness and ballet training, but rather the certainty of knowing why we're skating. During the last couple of months, we've found ourselves better as a team, we've settled in well in Berlin, and we've learned a lot about ourselves.

Since the beginning of March, we've officially become real Berliners and have registered in another city for the first time in our lives. Despite having lived in Dortmund for nearly seven years, we had never considered this necessary and hadn't dared to take this step in Lyon, either. Therefore we almost felt a bit like traitors at the Citizens' Bureau. We've only taken this step in the first place because our new landlord demanded a certificate of registration. We're still registered with our father at the same time, though, since we do feel very connected to NRW, Dortmund, and particularly Sprockhövel.

We can also report something positive about Carolina's knee. Shortly after the show at Holiday on Ice, Carolina had to take a break for a couple of days because the pain had returned. A new appointment for an MRI was quickly arranged to check whether everything was really alright inside the knee. To our amazement, we and the doctors were even positively surprised by the images because the knee looked significantly better than initially assumed. The surgery thus went even better than previously expected. Nevertheless, you shouldn't forget that it wasn't a "normal" meniscus surgery in Caro's case and that the rehabilitation and rebuilding process might still take several more months.

As we have already mentioned in the last journal entry, the new choreography was on this month's schedule for us. This year, we've had an abundance of pieces of music to choose from and could hardly come to a decision in the end. The shortlist included pieces such as Burlesque, Nine, Spider-Woman, Kill Bill, Marguerite, or The Matrix. The option to keep our old new Free Dance to Sherlock Holmes was also discussed until the end. On the other hand, we've had difficulties in finding a choreographer that we could afford. Due to the fact that we didn't compete last season, we won't get the grant for the choreography costs for this season until one year from now at the earliest. Furthermore, we needed someone who had time at hand. Due to the catastrophe in Japan, which caused the postponement of Worlds, most athletes', coaches', choreographers' and officials' annual planning probably got shifted, too.

It was only on the day of the arrival of choreographer Maurizio Margaglio that we decided on one of the pieces, and we built the Free Dance during the following days. The collaboration with Maurizio worked really great, so we even managed to complete the Free Dance one or two days earlier than originally planned. Initially, we even had the emergency plan that Daniel would work on the choreography with Steffi in case that Carolina's knee should turn sore again. Luckily, this plan wasn't needed and Carolina's knee stood the pressure. In the near future, we'll have to make changes to some parts of the program and adjust them to our new skating, but the basis is there. We would have also liked to create our new Short Dance at the same time, but according to our knowledge, there aren't any reliable rules yet regarding the choice of the compulsory pattern. Cha-cha-cha, rumba, and possibly samba are under consideration. A final decision will probably only be made at the World Championships in Moscow.

From April 12, we're both training in Oberstdorf for three weeks since we'll have our military training there this year. This year, we're doing the trainer training course for our career plan. We're doing this training course a year early so that we won't have to do the sergeant candidate training course until next year. We had asked for this since we suppose that we won't do the usual, intensive summer training completely this summer because the doctors had advised us not to cause our bodies too much stress up until 9 months postoperatively. The trainer training course has the advantage that it's 4 weeks shorter than the sergeant candidate training course.

Best wishes,

Carolina and Daniel