Journal

You might actually think that the holiday season was extremely relaxing for us. No training, no hectic schedule, and no panic because the German Championships are right around the corner. Indeed, this is somehow true. Christmas gifts got ordered online, and you could actually lean back and enjoy your cookies over the holidays without having a bad conscience. But even when you try to see the positive, a bit of resentment still remains. We had to cancel exhibition performances, and it's somewhat frustrating that we can't be in the middle of the action. For the first time in 10 years, we don't compete in the German Championships.

Besides, Daniel and our car skidded straight ahead into a turn, which means: no more loyal wheels for us. Daniel was alright, and at least he negotiated successfully with a used-car dealer who had left his business card under the windshield wiper months ago. Our pretty gem is now standing safe and sound among birds of a feather. All those semesters in which Daniel had grappled with negotiations in theory have paid off: for the enormous amount of 1€, the no-longer-roadworthy vehicle changed hands. We don't know yet how or whether we'll get a new car since you certainly can't finance such a purchase out of petty cash. Whoever wants to get rid of their well-preserved used car, please get in touch with us.

For the Christmas holidays, we went to our parental home in Sprockhövel. Seeing not only our family again, but also old friends from school, was definitely worth the travel. Of course we weren't spared the train chaos and arrived in Wuppertal with a delay of a good three hours. We were lucky to have had seats for the 6-hour train ride since we had been unable to reserve seats initially. On the return, Carolina was hit even harder: since trains got combined and the reservations therefore were forfeited, she had to stand in the aisle for about 3 hours. Daniel had chosen to travel via Hamburg to visit a friend there for a couple of hours, and his train also had a 60-minute delay.

Back in Berlin, we were looking forward to our new rooms. Finally, we were allowed to move into the House of Athletes. Up until then, we had "only" been allowed to stay in the residence hall, but could now move into the renovated rooms a good 50 m away. Carolina even had double luck. Since she had often cleaned up the kitchen in the residence hall in the past, she got a double room as a reward. While Daniel still lives on a floor space of 15 m², Carolina can enjoy life on 25 m² spread over two rooms now. It was still a bit difficult for us to move out, though. We'll miss the companionship of Fisch, Tino, Feed, or Mari, but with a distance of only 50 m by foot, you can still pay each other visits easily. At this point, thanks again for your support during the difficult time after the surgery.

Our daily routine this month was characterized by rehab training and studying. This sure was fun, too, but we did miss the ice. We had actually set our minds on going to the German Championships to watch, but we had to cancel this since we didn't want to face the railway snow chaos with Deutsche Bahn again. Daniel used the time instead for writing an article for the magazine Pirouette, which will be published in February. In his article, he writes about the significance of the media at sports events. He's particularly looking forward to hearing your critical opinion because he'd like to look into a similar problem in his master's thesis.

The year 2010 was definitely not our most successful one from an athletic point of view. I do hope, however, that I'll be able to look back in a few years and believe to have made the best of it and to have learned from the experience.

Happy 2011!

Carolina (and Daniel)