Obrigada, Brasil!

Nordic Ski World Championship 2011

For those who are not much into winter sports: Oslo was the location of the nordic ski world championships this year and we had cross-country, nordic combined and ski-jumping competitions for the past two weeks. Initally I was debating about going since I was right at the source and the new ski jump was built especially for this event but I didn't want to go alone so didn't buy a ticket early on. Retrospective that was a good thing because I spent the first week of the WC in bed with a feverish cold and I couldn't have stood outside for hours. In addition, we had the worst fog for about a week, so people must have had difficulties even seeing the athletes. Yet, when I heard that a few people from Uni were going and I felt a little better , I bought a ticket for the large hill ski jumping team competition on the second last day of the WC.

The whole week we were completely covered in dense fog and we were quite worried about the weather but we couldn't have gotten a better day.

Here, a side view of the ski jump. Although they were running express trains to the WC area, some people have had problems to reach the competitions in time so we started out really early and caught the very first train up there which wasn't bad at all. At almost every corner you get free food/drink/stuff from companies advertising their products.

That picture was taken a few hours before the competition. By the start of the competition the "stadium" was completely full.

The only downside of the good weather was the wind causing problems to the jumpers. Yet the competition started quite promising for the German team ...

Severin Freund just below the OSLO writing if you don't see him ;)
Unfortunately the competition was terminated after the first round (apparently due to the constantly changing wind conditions but it came quite unexpected even to the coaches etc.). It was quite unfortunate for the German team, since their last jumper, Michael Uhrmann, had bad luck with the wind and they missed 3rd place by 0.7 points or a mere 39 cm. And that was his very last jump since he plans to end his career this year.
For us it was quite disappointing to see only one round and the very abrupt ending was actually the only downside of an overall very nice experience. Although I am not really a fan of people in masses, it didn't feel as overwhelming as I feared - you still had space around you and people didn't seem to be as much in a rush as they usually are.

Euro 2008

Honestly, I love soccer (I keep it to this word not that Americans think I am talking about American football which of course is rugby in GB ;)) and usually I try to watch most of the games. Sometimes I do not make it to all of the games in the first round because I cannot stop to work at 6 pm for more than one week. Anyway, the last games of the first round and the games further on are an absolute MUST for me - I just want to see the teams playing. Just watching games where Germany is playing is absolutely ridiculous for me. Either you like soccer and you watch or you don't like it and don't watch but not liking soccer and watching only German games - how can people then ever judge how they play in comparison to other teams?
Anyway, this post should actually be about the differences between watching soccer in Germany and in Norway. Generally it doesn't really matter if one doesn't understand all what the commentator says - on Norwegian TV there are always two.
What I really had problems with was the 15 minute break which was filled completey with commercials - horrible. In Germany, you get either the Delling-Netzer team (sorry link is only in German)on ARD or Meyer/Klopp together with Kerner on ZDF. No matter what team is on, there will be a review of the best scenes, the goals and some debatable actions of the referee or the players. I like that a lot because there are always some things to learn about soccer and I really missed that a lot.
In my opinion, we finally got a european champion who deserves it - Spain was just at its very best - they had speed and accuracy and managed a very constant performance throughout the tournament.

Ok, ...

... obviously they didn't deserve it.

Nooooooo!

Lost with one goal, I don't believe it.

Not even 3 minutes...

...aaaaaaaaah it is so hard to see them leading 12:7 in the first half and now they are close to losing. Guys - if you win today, I will go to Lillehammer tomorrow - alone- whatever it costs AND I will start to play handball again. Usually I lose these kind of bets - maybe that works.

Finals

So Germany made it in the very last moment to the semi-final in handball (puh that was really tough to follow). Unfortunately nobody here is really interested, I have no TV and I am still debating if I should go to the final in Lillehammer - is it worth it or not? I will see the Germans no matter how they play in the semi-final since they have to play for the 3rd/4th place then.
Unfortunately, Norway didn't make it to the semi-final and they have to play Sweden to try for the 5th place. Anyway since a German flag would be inappropriate - here the Norwegian one ;)

Håndball euro

Something to look forward to quite soon - I am still debating with myself if I should buy tickets for the final in Lillehammer or not ... it is not so far away but I don't want to go alone and I am not really sure if somebody here is enthusiastic about hånball. Well I could have a chance to see the world champion since I didn't see them in my home country - but who knows maybe they don't make it to the final (although hånball is the only sport where I am really for the German team because those guys really give all they have ;)).