My little on took her first steps, or more like… her cute little clumsy sliding attempts, on the ice in Germering, a small town near Munich, where the rink is open again.
Germering is one of these suburban places where, for the most part, there’s nothing much to see except the Soviet Union-esque concrete buildings and kitsch shops for the bored housewife and her crochet-addicted cousin (nothing wrong with crocheting, I mean… unless you start making summer tops, you know what I’m sayin?). I once lived there. I guess, the deli was okay.
Anyway, during the times of the all-encompassing not-to-be-named lung plague in 2021, there was one of the few open ice rinks in this town. You had to get a virus-free certificate beforehand and stand outside in the icy cold for 45 minutes before being allowed in (which, I guess, is particularly intelligent during a rampant respiratory plague going around, but it was what it was…), and then you could enjoy the ice for two hours, and take the mask off only to eat pretzels (lol… only in Bavaria… virus just avoids pretzel eaters yk?). Does that make you a bit nostalgic too? No, that’s just me? Okay…
I hadn’t skated in 20 years
I’m writing this now, in 01/2023, two years later, and it still seems completely absurd to me what everyday life was like back then. Anyway, that was my first time on the ice in almost two decades then. And for my child, she was three, it was the very first one!
So, we (myself, my husband and Flauschi = my kid’s nickname) tried to pick up on 20 years of forgotten half-knowledge about ice skating. I mean, I could still remember what “lemons” were – or swizzles? The lemon-shaped forward slides you make on two feet if you don’t know how to skate and don’t want to fall over. That. And some half-assed slaloms, I could do those, hehe.
She wanted to skate but she also found it so weird
At first, my child found ice skating really strange. She did want to do it. After all, she had begged me for half a year to finally buy her those skating boots. I wouldn’t have thought of it on my own, as in ever. For me, ice skating was more of a “Visiting my Mom, and there’s a rink in town, I guess” thing, not a “I want to do this every winter and spend all my money on it” thing.
So, each of us took one hand of our baby girl’s hands, while she worked hard to move forward. I remember that it was already quite important to me though to make the most of that precious Sunday morning time on the ice. After all, we were also pretty lucky to even get in, since the number of tickets was limited due to said plague. But it wasn’t very crowded still…
So for the first sessions that we went there, to the Germering Polariom, we would continue to hold her hand, but less and less each time. First she’d let go of just one hand, then she dared to run towards me, then she would be tiptoeing and stomping, which soon turned into gliding forward. And the penguins… oh yes, those damn things were very popular with my girl…
Somehow, suddenly we were constantly in that ice rink. The Polariom really is one of those dark hockey rinks with a lot of wood, quite rustic and moody. But I still find it somehow cozy there. I won’t lie, I don’t like Germering as a place to live at all. It was just always too cramped and dull for me. But I can’t really say anything negative about the ice rink, except that it’s jam-packed every weekend.
Joining a skating club
As for our humble ice skating beginnings, I think we should have been braver and joined a skating club earlier. I waited for some time because I wasn’t really interested in ice skating as a sport, especially not as a competitive sport. But that’s actually a silly misconception.
Clubs promote so-called “Breitensport” here in Germany. It means “broad sports” as in “for the broad public”. And while you can compete when skating in a club, you don’t have to, and it’s way more about learning and being active than about competition, depending on where you go, what group you are in and what your goals are. Clubs simply make the sport more accessible and offer training to basically everyone. It’s even quite age-inclusive here… at least in Munich and the surrounding area, where ice dancing is offered with a focus on the elderly. In my opinion there’s actually done more for the 60+ generation than for the 30-50yos.
Anyway, I am writing this, because it is important to me to tell people finding this blog that you should join a figure skating club as early as possible. As in: if you think you want to do this sport, just do it. The club needs money probably, and if you stop coming to the sessions, you’ll really benefit everyone else. Same as if you stay. The only thing that’s not great is the loads of people that just come for testing lessons once and never come back. So if you think you can make it through half a season, go join a club!
Joining a skating club, we would have had earlier access to way more ice time and also more guidance. It also makes sense to start at the beginning of the season rather than at the end when all the groups are already fixed, and the beginners have made much progress, so that you might not catch up in group training. In my experience, entering late made everything very difficult and it wasn’t as welcoming, looking back now from seeing others start in the seasons after me, sadly.
I was hesitant to join a club mostly because I didn’t want to join for the sole purpose to get on the ice for almost free. At that time, the rinks were still closed or heavily restricted for the public, so that felt kinda unfair, since I wasn’t interested in the sport itself that much, and didn’t know where this was going. Maybe that’s a generational thing, I don’t know. But back in my childhood days, a sports club was for the sports nerds, not for randos who didn’t know what they want, and certainly not for adults… But that seems to be changing, and I appreciate it now.
Anyway, after a few weeks, we felt that we did want to go ice skating more regularly. So got my kid to join the trial sessions twice, and she thought it was cool, especially with the many other little kids around. And then, yeah, we just stuck with it. End of story.
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