It was a normal training session, relaxed, not much to do. Did my daily tasks of getting meal vouchers for my team, daily report sheets etc. in the morning, but this time I also tried to get starting lists for the trainings. This is actually one of my duties, but my team always gets those itself somehow :P I mean, the competition office isn't far away, but still! I'd rather bring them the lists so I know they have them and can start to work.
Around 9am, my new assistant, Caro, arrived at OWI. :) I gave her a tour, introduced her to my team, explained her what she needs to do/know... nothing special, did it before when Manuel had arrived in Innsbruck. ;P
At OWI, there's a lot of security. Nearly at every door, there's a security wanting to see my accreditation. I'm accredited to access all venues (including Seefeld and Kühtai), Berg Isel Stadium, Medals Plaza and the Youth Olympic Village. In addiction, I can also access the sport competition areas at the venues, and the athletes preparation area. My accreditation is still the sports production assistant accreditation... as I'm a coordinator now, I should, in fact, have access to the Main Operation Centre instead of Medals Plaza, which makes handing in my daily SP report difficult at times ^^; Anyway, most security guys are nice (one isn't, *cough*), but there's one who's especially nice. She's guarding an entrance to the ice hall, at which I work. From time to time we have a nice chat, and that day she told me that she's reaally like to see the opening ceremony with her kids, but there's no more tickets available. :S Volunteers get free tickets, but she is an actual professional security, not a volunteer, so she doesn't have access to the volunteer tickets. As I was planning to go to the volunteer center at innsbruck exhibition center (IEC) anyway, I told her I'd ask for tickets.
My shift at OWI ended at 2pm due to the opening ceremony at Berg Isel Stadium (BIS). That is when the real "fun" started! Thing is, along with 3 other assistants, I had to pick up the international federations (in this case FIS, ISU, FIBT, IIHF) at their hotel at the other side of the street from OWI, and get them up to BIS. Maria (Sports production Coordinator responsible for all the volunteers in this functional area) had sent us eMails with informations regarding the transport, but as I don't have a computer at my hostel, I couldn't check. :D Thank God there's the workforce coordinator, Ines, who's responsible for all the staff at OWI. I printed the mails there, hoping for a list of the people we had to transport. There was a list, but I wasn't sure whether it was complete or not. We were told that we'd get a list at the volunteer center, so after our shifts had ended, me and Caro went there, to innsbruck exhibition centre. We got the lists, but were still a bit confused, so a vounteer got a woman to answer our questions, and the woman was Julia! :D She's the person responsible for all the Volunteers and I had mailed with her before the games, regarding my volunteer application etc. Funnily enough she actually recognised me xD Along with Maria and Wiebke, she's one of three people I had mailed with before the games. I wanted to meet them all in real life, and I did. :) Yaay, I get to know people!!
Anyway, I was still a little confused, but more than that I was hungry. I was asking for tickets to the opening ceremony for the security woman, but, as expected, they couldn't give me any. I also didn't get one as I'm accredited for Bergisel Stadium anyway and can walk in and out.
Around 15:30, Caro left me to go home, we'd meet again directly at the hotel at 16:45. Near OWI, there's a grocery shop, so I took line Y20... from IEC one station to the youth olympic village, where I was kicked out... I was told the lines would stop their service due to the opening ceremony. Great, eh? I'm not from Innsbruck, had 30 minutes to get to the hotel and buy myself something to eat. I mean, a volunteer in the bus told me which public transport lines I need to take, but it cost a lot of time. I arrived at 16:35, 10 minutes before I was going to meet with the IFs. -.- The stress and hunger made me feel somewhat sick actually, so I still went to the shop and bought myself bananas and something sweet for the bus ride.
When I got back, some IF people were already waiting for us. The only IF wearing a (extraordinarily looking? :D) uniform was the FIS, where men were wearing lime green jackets, and women pink ones. This would become quite handy later. ;P As the FIS representants staying at that hotel were so easy to identify, they were the first ones we let enter the busses. We checked off the names of those entering the busses... though not all of them were on our lists. We wrote their names down. Okay, got all IF representants waiting in the lobby into the three provided busses, and realised that a lot of people were missing :D So we decided to simply send two of the busses up to Bergisel and wait additional 5 minutes for those not on time. After that, the third bus departed and took us up to BIS.
On the way to BIS, a group of people asked if they could get onto our bus. The busses were reserved for IFs buuut, as we still had enough seats available... ^^ When we arrived at bergisel, it turned out that the group we let in apparently was the security lady with her kids, who were wearing torch-relay toques. :D She managed to get opening ceremony tickets somehow and was really thankful we let her ride with us. ^^ The IF people are really nice and relaxed, they didn't mind at all we took them with us. Actually, I think they would have minded if we didn't. :)
We were walking up the hill, to the ski jumping area.. for those not familiar with it, here's a photo:
The show itself was so cute. ^^ I took a lot of photos and even made videos. Innsbruck is the first city in the world to host olympic games for the third time, so the sight of three olympic fires was spectacular. Too bad I didn't have the time to get close to it, as I had to guide the IFs back to the busses... :/ The fires no longer are burning up there as three large fires require a lot of energy and go against the principle of environment friendly games.
Edit: DAMN!!! How could I forget. When an Austrian athlete spoke the olympic oath, she forgot her text... it was silent for a second, and then she said - live on TV - "Scheiße!" (Shit) XD The entire stadium was laughing. AND! After her, an Austrian official (I think?) also spoke the oath, and also forgot her text... xD That was a historic moment of the olympic games xD Here it is on youtube already! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGb7-s6p1BA
The way back to the hotel was similar to the way from the hotel to BIS. We got the IF representatives to enter two busses, that left on time, and the third one was waiting for those who're late. It worked well. I was working for 15 hours that day, and I felt less stressed than the previous days, where I had very little work... :) Unforgetable, this experience.
Now for today. The first competitions in figure skating! My assistant took over the morning shift, so I actually got to sleep for more than 5 hours this night. ^^ Today was unspectacular, nothing comparably to yesterday. Again, I had little to do. I watched the figure skating trainings and competitions, and decided to come here to IEC to update my blog. Tomorrow I'll work from 8 am to 8 pm. :) Another competition, but still no medal event! The first medal event in figure skating will be on monday. I was told that the results of two competitions in one discipline of figure skating will determine the winner. We'll see! I'm afraid Austria won't win though... we're too far behind in points (rank 1 currently has twice the amount of points as our Austrian figure skater for the men's short programme), but I still think he is amazing. They're all amazing! You should visit Innsbruck and see it yourself. Everyone who's been here agrees: Figure skating on TV is boring, but in real life it's really spectacular. :)
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