Winterberg - adventures in the basement

I've been in Winterberg, Germany with the rest of the Intercontinental Cup Team since Sunday afternoon, and have been sliding since Tuesday. Tomorrow, with only six training runs under my belt (it's my first time here but the others have been here before) we have our first race. I'm a bit nervous! But also excited, since things are starting to come together. There's something about learning a new track that is just wonderful. Frustrating and wonderful at the same time.

I'll fill you in on the track and sliding more later, but first want to tell you about the adventures we've had in the hotel.

First, the hotel is like many others we've stayed in in Europe. It's old, and cobbled together; we girls have to first go UP 21 steps, then down a hallway, around a corner, then DOWN another 21 steps, to get to our room.

Sleds aren't allowed in the rooms, so we have to keep our sleds in this little room in the basement...accessed by going down the hill to the back of the hotel...and to which there's only one key...and which doesn't have enough room for sled work...

...so we finally found a way to get to the sled room through the inside of the hotel, and how to get into the inner rooms of the basement to do sled work, i.e. sanding runners.

We go down these stairs, the door to which is hidden behind some red velvet curtains:

Then take a right hand turn and walk down a dark stone hallway, culminating in this:

Which comes out this hole under another set of stairs (yes, we have to duck under them - those stairs go to the owner's quarters so we can't use them):

Then leads to another hallway, with dark storage rooms on either side - here I am at the end of that hallway, working on my runners earlier:

Here's Annie in the room, which is the only choice for sled work since it's the only room besides the stairwell with a light:

If you go through the room and hang a left, you end up in yet another dark hallway, that leads to the outside room that the sleds are actually stored in:

It's pretty creepy at first, and for the first few days we girls only went down in twos, but now we're up and down all the time and comfortable with it. Just thought I'd share some of the atmosphere of the trip!