Monday, December 27, 2010

Italian Christmas at home

After the very familiar Munich-Singapore-Melbourne flight (over 24 hours), I finally made it home for Christmas. I have had only one Christmas at home in the past 10 years, so as you can imagine I was pretty excited to come home for the occasion! Awaiting me in Australia was beautiful 25-degree sunny weather. A big difference to being in the freezer of Europe!

True to Crema tradition, we had a big Italian family lunch with 25 family members. On this year’s menu was lobster, oysters, prawns (Australian tradition) as well as suckling pig, a smoked leg of ham, home-made lasagne (grazie Nonna), vitello tornato, tiramisu, grappa, panettone etc etc… the list goes on!

 (The dogs awaiting their gifts, Diesel and Mya)

(Preparing the enormous smoked ham-on-the-bone)

(Mum with the suckling pig)

(My family)

(The Crema kids; Giulia, Nick and I)

(Big family lunch)

(Crema girls; Olivia, Giulia, Jessica and I)

(Jess and I)

It was a great Christmas and definitely worth the long trip home to spend time with family and friends.

I am now heading back to Munich this afternoon where we will start the second block of the season. The first block was mostly training with one Europa Cup and two World Cup’s in the final week. The second block is basically all racing. It means travelling every few days from mountain to mountain, country to country, and basically living straight out of a suitcase for the next two and a half months. Let’s just say after years of doing this, we ski racers have become some of the world’s best packers!

First up on the race agenda is St. Johann World Cup in Austria, which is the famous night race. Every year this race attracts huge crowds and is generally one of the most anticipated races of the year. It is raced on double-injected ice, a very steep pitch and under the stadium lights. So I’ve definitely got something to look forward to!