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On Saturday morning, we had the prize giving ceremony. It started off with a traditional flag dance in which the dancers performed all kinds of tricks with the flags, accompanied by music. Have a look at the video to get an impression.

After the show, we moved to a little park in the centre of the village, where the prizes were given to the athletes. There was a lot of cheering and many happy faces. Special trophies were given to the only three girls in the competition, Julia Kucherenko, Natalia Petrova and Evgenia Laritskaya from Russia. Amazing performance to keep up with over 100 men, well done! Then, the official trophies were given to the winners Alex Ploner (ITA), Christian Ciech (ITA), and Primoz Gricar (SLO) as well a to the Italian, French, and Austrian teams.

Also all the helpers were given some gifts. I was surprised when they called the three female FAI officials, Heather, Francoise and myself, to the stage. We were given beautiful bunches of flowers. Later on, we were called to the stage again, along with our male colleagues Flip and Dennis, to receive a basket full of local specialties. It was great to see our work so much appreciated, also by many of the pilots who thanked us for being there and helping.

I would like to say thank you to many people: Flavio and his team for all the effort they put into organising and running the competition, it was really well organised and a pleasure to work there; my colleagues Heather, Francoise, Flip, and Dennis, for the excellent collaboration; all the pilots for keeping their spirits up even when they did not get much flying in and for being very constructive; and of course the team leaders and drivers who are always there to support their pilots. Thank you all, it was a great time.

After the prize giving ceremony, Nils, Jonas and I drove to Rome where Nils had booked a room for us, just south of the city. Finding the hotel, however, was a challenge. We could see it, but we could not find a road that would take us there. It was like in a maze. We were already feeling like getting crazy, when we finally got there. Was that area too Italian for us? We don’t know. In any case, after checking in, we went to the beach and stayed there for a while, then had an aperitif and finally dinner with a beautiful view of the sunset in a very nice restaurant.

The next morning, we dropped Jonas off at the airport from where his flight to Umea in Sweden left, and Nils and I went to Ostia Antica, the old Roman seaport, just south west of Rome. We were surprised to learn that there were 50,000 inhabitants 2,000 years ago. And the city must have been huge, with houses, theatres, official buildings and so on. From Ostia, we went to Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer residence, which is pleasantly located on a hill some 30 kilometres south east of Rome. From one side of the hill, there is a beautiful view of the city of Rome, whereas on the other, there is a wonderful turquoise lake. I can imagine that it is so much nicer to be there in the summer because there is always a slight breeze. From Castel Gandolfo, we continued to Frascati, where there are some most beautiful villas. After a last coffee and ice cream, we went back to the airport. I caught my plane to Hamburg, Nils his plane to Copenhagen.

I got home slightly before eleven at night, and my alarm went off at six this morning. Back to work.

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