Sverige og HamKam

Lars, Martin, Carolin and I went to Sweden on Saturday to buy some cheap goods. It is pretty normal for Norwegians to go to Sweden to get large quantities of tobacco, meat and alcohol-- kinda like how my family goes to Costco haha!! It was about a two hour drive to Charlottenberg, a city very close to the Norwegian\Swedish border. Martin and Carolin have made this trip a couple times before to get snus, chicken, wine, beer and candy! The candy store was HUGE. I was overwhelmed with all the choices...This picture of the candy store is the only shot I took all day (what was I thinking?!)...but then again we didn't really do much sight seeing. Instead, we were shopping! And, Sweden, (at least this part of the country) looks very similar to Norway. Pretty crazy all in all to think that we left around 10am, stopped at the pharmacy, checked the tire pressure, picked up some friends, drove to another country, shopped for a few hours, and drove back by 4pm.

On Sunday Lars and I lazed around until around 5 when we headed to the local stadium to watch HamKam's last fotball game of the year. HamKam plays in Norway's top division and tonight they were in danger of relegation. I didn't know what relegation was because leagues don't work that way in the U.S., at least to my knowledge. So relegation is a process that happens at the end of a season when the worst teams are demoted to a lower division. It also works in reverse where the best teams can be moved up to a higher division; I think this would be called promotion. Anyway, HamKam had to win or else they would come in last place and be relegated. They were also relying on another team to beat Lillestrøm to give them enough points to jump out of last. Well, Aalesund beat Lillestrøm 3-0 I believe, and HamKam lost 1-0. Sad night...and not the best showing for my first professional soccer game EVER! It was, however, still a great experience. Hamar is not a big place, and the stadium wasn't close to being full. And still, the fans were a bit crazy: lots of yelling, cheering, booing and jumping up and down. It's just too bad that they didn't have more to be cheering about!

It was also super cold. I think it was -5° celsius, which is about 23° fahrenheit! Lars and I were really bundled up...I was wearing two pairs of socks, Lars' winter boots, two layers of pants, four layers on top plus my winter coat and a hat! And, even despite wearing a pair of gloves and a pair of mittens, three of my fingers still turned purple. And, -5° C is nothing! Lars told me that the day he came home from the hospital when he was born that it was -52° C! That is -62.6° F!

Am I going to survive the winter?? :)