Innovations! Blog #1 by Elliana & Alex

Hello from Debrecen, Hungary and the 2016 World Junior Championships.  This is Elliana Pogrebinsky and Alex Benoit and we are thrilled to be blogging once again for ice-dance.com!  As you may recall from our previous blogs, since we blog as a team and don’t want to confuse our readers, when we write we refer to ourselves as “we,” “Ellie” or “Alex.”  Also, we have found continuity in providing a theme to unify our blogs, usually taking a couple of weeks of research to hit upon the right one.  This time however, our theme was very apparent to us.  In researching Debrecen and Hungary, we were surprised to learn about the significant number of inventions, scientific discoveries and Nobel prizes that have been directly connected to the country.  When we dug a little deeper, we were stunned by how many of these inventions impact each of our daily lives, and knew that our theme had to be “Innovations!”
 
So, our day of travel (Sunday) began with an extremely cruelly-timed return to Daylight Savings Time!  As if jumping ahead 5 hours from Detroit to Debrecen weren’t enough, we also got to lose an additional hour to “Springing Ahead.”  We flew overnight to Amsterdam, which has become a frequent layover destination for us, and then took a short flight to Budapest.  From there, we boarded a shuttle bus for the nearly 3 hour drive to Debrecen, near the eastern border of the country.  By the time we arrived at our hotel, Ellie (not one who enjoys long drives) was itching to move around and Alex (not one who has to limit his caloric intake) was ravenously hungry.  We were not disappointed — the hotel and rooms are lovely and the athlete buffet is great!  We met up with our roommates, Tomoki Hiwatashi and Bradie Tennell, who like Alex, are both from the Chicago suburbs.  We are off to bed now, as we start official practice at 8:30 am on Tuesday.   Please check back tomorrow for more photos and a recap of our adventures!
 
Ellie & Alex
 
Oh — the connection to Hungarian innovation today??  We would not have been able to cover the 4645 air miles between Detroit and Budapest as quickly as we did, had it not been for Hungarian aerospace engineer Theodore von Karman’s research in fluid flow.  This study helped him recognize the importance of the swept-back wing design for modern jet travel.