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North Bay 2018, Women's World Championships.

Since Sunday evening, the Czech curling team has been acclimatizing in the 50,000-strong Canadian town of North Bay. It includes preparatory training sets in two local curling clubs. And today the first of them took place. We spent the morning at the Sturgeon Curling Club, about 40 kilometers from North Bay. The Japanese girls trained with us today, led by Russ Howard!!! and tomorrow the Swedes and Danes will join us. The arrangement worked out great. A nice four-lane course with a reasonably sized club and facilities abounded with a friendly atmosphere. Everyone treated us like sports celebrities, which made us a bit uncomfortable. We gave out a number of autographs and a few dozen photos that we had brought back from Prague. The day also included an afternoon game against a local top women's team. Several dozen spectators came to watch and took up all the seats. We won 9 : 3 and after the game we sat with the friendly Canadian women. In the evening we bought Chinese food and held our second team meeting. Sturgeon - see photo.

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The Ramada Hotel, where we'll be spending the next 14 days, is a bit run down and a bit grubby, but we know we'll actually just be sleeping here because soon the frantic regime of pendulating between the hall, hotel, restaurant and gym will begin. So we don't have a big problem with that. There is a large working model railway in the foyer, the author of which makes ice at Sturgeon Curling Club (he is an icemaker) and also volunteers at the MS. Not only he, but other local curling players, enjoy the championship very much and see it as one of the most important events of their lives. We do too. See photo - Welcome.