Pack, Prep, and Travel to Germany with me!

Hello and welcome back to my blog! If you are new here my name is Rebecca and I am a professional figure skater! I did my first professional figure skating show back in March of 2023, and now I am starting my next big adventure in the beautiful country of Germany! Come along with me as I pack, prep, and travel to my next 3-month professional figure skating show!

Prep

Before heading out for this contract I had a bit of preparation and planning to do! Packing for a 3-month international adventure is more challenging than I expected. I signed this contract a few months before my travel date which gave me time to figure out what, if any, paperwork, credit cards, currency, and any other things I would need to prepare for international travel. Fortunately, the company I am working with, prepared most of the required paperwork so that part was pretty easy on my end. One thing I made sure to do was exchange some American dollars for Euros so that I would have a little bit of cash on hand if needed.

Packing

Using my knowledge from my first show, I used that as a starting point to decide what I would need/want to bring, and what I maybe would leave home this trip.

The Essentials

I started with the easy stuff… all of my basic show essentials for hair, makeup, etc. Some of these items included my show robe, fishnets, a mini sewing kit, a lot of hair ties and twisty pins, makeup, and more!

Check out some of my Amazon showgirl favorites!

As for clothes… this was one of the hard parts. Of course, I would need to bring athletic clothes, but it is always hard to choose how many “normal”/dressy clothes to bring.

I also had to keep in mind what the weather would be like during my stay. I will be in Germany from November through January, so I had to plan for cold weather, rain, and snow. That meant a winter jacket, boots, gloves, and a small umbrella were essential on my packing list.

Skates

The last thing left to do was to prep and pack my skates. For professional shows, the skaters are required to have tan skates. For my last show, I used a tan skate wrap for the main part of my boot and a roll of tan tape for the heel of my boot. My skate wrap held up quite well throughout my previous the contract and beyond, so I just touched up a few nicks and scratches and left the wrap alone. I did however decide to retape the heel of my boot to give it a nice clean look and fix any corners that may have started to peel.

Check out the tape I used for my skates!

Once I had all of my skates, clothes, and many other miscellaneous items packed up it was time to embark on my long travel journey to Germany.

Travel

5 pm ~ October 31

I started my journey to Germany on a 5 pm flight to O’hare Airport in Chicago, Illinois. The flight was quite short however it was 30 minutes delayed…this meant my very short layover of only 59 minutes was going to be quite close. When I arrived in Chicago I had to wait for my gate-checked carry-on before running through the airport to my next gate.

At this point I was worried I would miss my connecting flight, however, when I finally got to my gate it turns out the connecting flight was also delayed 40 minutes! So, basically, I was stressed and sprinting through the airport for no reason haha.

8 pm ~ October 31

Once I finally made it onto the flight to Frankfurt, Germany the main stress was over! This flight was an overnight flight of around 8 hours long, so I planned to sleep for the majority of it in hopes of avoiding some of the jet lag once I arrived. I ate dinner on the plane and then slept a good portion of the flight.

11 am ~November 1

After arriving in Frankfurt I went through customs on my way to my next gate. This process was incredibly easy and took me less than 5 minutes! Since I had a longer layover here, I was able to take my time walking to my gate. I also had some extra time to check out the shops on the way.

1pm ~ November 1

The last flight was another short connection flight of about 40 minutes which brought me to my final stop…Dusseldorf, Germany. Ironically on this last flight, I met 2 of the other skaters sitting in the same row as me on the plane!

2pm ~ November 1

Once we arrived at the Dusseldorf airport we retrieved all of our luggage and headed to the meeting point where a total of 6 skaters would meet our driver. Then, it was time to drive to our final destination, the place we would be staying for the next 3 months.

3:30pm ~ November 1

We finally made it after an incredibly long travel day! Now that the day is over, I plan to just unpack, meet the other cast members, and settle into our new home! Tomorrow we will be getting our ID’s and doing our initial costume fittings, then on Friday, November 3rd, it’s time to start rehearsals!!

Well, that is all for now! Thank you for coming along with me on this fun travel adventure! Be sure to follow me on social media to keep up with my latest skating endeavors! I cant wait to share more of this awesome journey with all of you! I’ll see you in the next one 🙂

XOXO, Rebecca

Pack, Prep, and Travel to Germany with me!

Prep