A fulfilled dream
Before I left to Norway from home I was convinced that I will visit Biathlon World Championship in Oslo. When I found out that the attending on this event is one of our field trips I was unbelievably happy. Biathlon World Championship is a huge event and I can’t imagine better country for organising this event than Norway. Biathlon is very popular in the Czech Republic and we’ve got several very good athletes.
We left Kristiansand on Friday morning. We were five guys in the car. Expect me there was Marek, Line, Julian and his girlfriend. Driving from Kristiansand to Oslo is kind of boring for the first time and the second time is even worse. Fortunately there were nice people in the car so we had some fun on the way. We met other guys in Oslo at Bygdøy next to the Fram museum. I’ve visited Fram two times already so I was really glad that I didn’t have to pay for entry thanks to my press card. Although I’ve been there two times before it was still interesting to go there. I was reading information about expeditions more detail and focused on the arctic survival. There is still a lot of interesting stuff which I can learn.
After visiting Fram we drove to our camp place at Holmenkollen. As a skiing enthusiast this was paradise for me. When Len told us that we are camping there I thought “OK, we’ll just stay somewhere in the forest”. The reality was surprising. We stayed in the hearth of the Holmenkollen skiing tracks. We literally camped on the crossing of three different tracks. Other guys stayed in tepee tents and I and Adam slept outside in bivouac sacks. It was pretty nice expect I was too warm in the night. Even though it was minus five degrees Celsius; with -35 °C comfort sleeping bag is just still too warm.
Next day morning after I made breakfast (porridge and warm tea) I dressed myself and went for the best cross-country skiing in my entire life. Skiing tracks in Holmenkollen (better to call them skiing highways with its width of 6 metres) are awesome. I mean the view and the surrounding nature is not anything very special. But the tracks itself and the atmosphere are indescribable. I made twenty kilometres there time by time cheered up by Norwegians who were also camping there. Very special was when I met several world athletes while warming up. Now I can say I was skiing with Gabriela Soukalova (2016 biathlon overall world cup winner).
After I came back from skiing me, Marek, Michael, Chris, Paige, Mike and Martynas went to the stadium watching men’s relay race. We were staying in the free access zone just next to the track. Atmosphere was awesome and it again showed up how are the Norwegians nice. We were presented by several beverages (non-alcoholic of course!) and food by people who were cheering up their country there. Everybody had a great time there and even Czechs finished at nice 5th place.
Another big event came in the evening. It was Outdoor Education’s competition called “Who’s going to make himself dumb”. Everything started when Len came to our camp. It was already dark and we made a fire on the bottom of the slope. Len came up with an idea that we should build a stunt and jump over the fire with skis, naked. Joey and Marek accepted this challenge and made some spectacular tries there. Nevertheless the winner of the competition became Adrian. He was still quite incompetent for skiing that time. This fact didn’t stop him from skiing down the steepest cross-country track I’ve ever seen just in boxers. His show ended up with sliding twenty meters on his naked ass and some but unpleasant injury.
On Sunday me, Jonas, Julian and his girlfriend bought tickets for Mass start race. It was again breath-taking atmosphere and although Czech Gabriela Soukalova finished fourth just few seconds behind podium I really loved this race. And how was the men’s race? Norwegian Johannes Boe won and third was the biathlon legend Ole Einar Bjoerndalen. Norwegians went totally crazy, beautiful moments.
I didn’t learn much about outdoor stuff there but I learned a lot about Norwegian culture and people. And I love it!
