Friday 21st

It's quite early in the morning, but already time to leave! With the 6.40 train I head for Milan, then have to take the metro to reach the other train station (and almost kill myself - especially my right hand! - bringing my _heavy_ suitcase down the stairs... why there's no down escalator??! >__<), and finally by 10.15 I'm in Torino! At the station I meet Sara, my roommate, and together we start looking for our hotel, which luckily is very easy to find, just 2 minutes away from Porta Nuova (I couldn't have survived dragging my suitcase any longer!!).

Maps and address at hand, our first target is to get to Palavela, where from 9.30 there's a meeting for all the volunteers. We take bus n.1, but we're not sure at which stop to get off; anyway somewhere after Lingotto I caught a glimpse of something red with a strange roof... let's get off, let's get off here!! And after a couple of minutes walking we are there. Now, the problem is, how to get inside the building! Which is not so easy, as all around it there's some kind of barrier. Anyway, when we join the other sport volunteers, there are still some introductory speeches going on. Just the time to spot some familiar faces - Emanuele, Anna, the twins Chiara and Francesca, Benedetta - and then we get divided in groups according to our function, so that we can start the tour of Palavela with our coordinator. My job would be "dressing room attendant" (>__< when I learnt about it I was like What?? Why should I be stuck backstage and without seeing anything of what's going on on the ice??!), so our coordinator, Giovanna, first takes us to the info desk area and to the dressing rooms, briefly explaining what we have to do - like monitoring the accesses in that area (press of course is not allowed!) and making sure that skaters always have bottles of water and clinex at hand.
We also had a look around the rink, finally I could see how the arena looked like! At first you get a really good impression, the first rows are quite near the ice, and the metal seats and the glass panels make it look modern, I don't know how to say. The real problem is that the arena is beautiful to be _looked_ at, but not to be lived! I mean, most of the seats have no back, and even those who have it, are not really comfortable... how can someone sit there all the competition long?! The glass panels don't block your view, but on the other hand they make everything look kind of greenish - and, YOU CAN'T HANG BANNERS!!!!! Come on, what's a competition without banners? Completely colorless... Another big problem is that if you want to move from one level to another you have to use outdoor stairs. Last but not least: the size. It is so small that there weren't enough seats reserved for athletes and teams, and neither for volunteers (or at least, at the beginning it looked like that!). About other areas, like corridors, lounges and offices: everything looks kind of rough and unfinished... let's hope they'll fix it by the time of the Olys!
The biggest concern of the day for me and other volunteers was: can we enter the arena and watch competitions when we have no shifts? At first we were told that "your pass is not a competition ticket" and it sounded like we wouldn't have been allowed to see anything. Which made me go nuts, as, with my job, it meant that when I had shifts I couldn't see anything, and the same when I had no shifts!!!!! Arrrrgh!! And it surely doesn't help listening to sentences like "But volunteering is like this!". Even more annoying, we were told that there were no more all-event tickets available, and that tickets for the finals were sold out. I was so so so angry! Ok, I'm working free for 10 days, but I'm not completely stupid, at least I want to see something! Otherwise they should have told us since the beginning (when they asked us to volunteer) that we wouldn't have been able to see competitions, so that we could buy tickets in advance... >__<
A brief stop to a cafè, and then our tour goes on at Palaghiaccio Tazzoli, aka the practice rink. If Palavela looked unfinished, this one was still partly under construction!!! But the ice was there, that's the important thing ;)

We have lunch together with all the other volunteers, and as we finish Sara and I have to run back to our hotel, to change our clothes and start our shift at the athletes' accreditation at Hotel Majestic. This is the first time (in a long series!) we have to wear our "fantastic" uniform :p We start our shift about 3.30pm, half an hour later than what scheduled, but anyway there's no one at the hotel who needs to register. Silvia explains us what we have to do: first we have to give the paper with the skaters' name and steps to follow (like if they have to fill in forms or not), and tell them to prepare passport and musics, as the next step will be to fill in the forms with missing info about their programs and hand in their CDs. Then they can go to the actual accreditation, and finally collect a gift and meal vouchers. Different thing for coaches and team leaders, who can directly go to the accreditation service. For a couple of hours everything is quiet, no teams arriving; well, it shouldn't be a problem if I go away for a couple of minutes... of course when I get back Sara tells me "Zagorodniuk arrived right while you were away!"! Next to arrive is Murvanidze, who according to our arrival schedule should have been in Torino only from tomorrow - that means we haven't the sheet with his name ready! He looks quite tired, and not so willing to do the accreditation right now... "Have I to do it today?" Well, for us it wouldn't be a problem, but our boss said "Today", so poor Murva had to take the CDs out of his suitcase and register.
The teams from Latvia and Spain (both Spanish athletes looked new to me!) arrive later in the afternoon, and also the British dancers (when they came at the welcome desk Ponomarenko - I would have never ever recognized him!!! - was with them, but soon after he disappeared and didn't register. It seems that also the O's lost his traces, because they came twice to ask if he had come here to accredit, but no, we hadn't seen him ^^;;).
We first have a problem when the Belorussian dancers arrive, as their coach was wrongly listed as a team leader, and the team leader as a coach ^^;;
Somewhen in the afternoon Trifun Zivanovic and his coach come to our desk, asking for something, but I don't understand at all what they are saying ^^;; (don't know why, but I kind of panicked every time someone approached our desk :p); luckily Sara understands that they're just asking if they can get their passes now, because the machine to print them wasn't working when they first came to accredit.
Then it is the turn of the Ukranian dancers, and around 9pm the Italian team is here too (but not Federica & Massimo, as they had already arrived the day before); new problem when Alessia Aureli says "I don't have my ID with me!", the only document she has is her driving licence - that in the end, after a couple of phone calls to "higher powers", gets accepted ;)
I have to say that sitting at the welcome desk, everybody asked _us_ all sort of questions (ranging from "Do you know where the restroom is?" - somehow I always know the answer to this :p - to "Can I change my room?"), even if we didn't know almost anything - our job was only to give sheets and tell which way to go for accreditation! But anyway we did our best to try to find answers for everybody ;)
It's almost 10.30pm when we can finally leave; my shift tomorrow should start at 6am for men practice, but having checked that _no one_ in the first two practice groups has arrived in Torino yet, I phoned my coordinator and was allowed to get to Palavela at 7.30, yay!!

...to be continued...