As the World Championships of Biathlon took place at Holmenkollen in Oslo, it gave us a reason to go there see the competitions,, get the atmosphere and learn a bit more about the skiing history.

Friday:

• went by car with Michael, Dom, Chris and Jill
• meet at 2pm at Fram Museum
• visiting the museum: The Fram museum was really interesting to visit. It tells everything about the polar expeditions from Amundsen, Nansen and also Scott. They built museum around the ship called “Fram”, which is really impressing to see. It was used from Nansen exploring the northpole and Amundsen exploring the southpole later. This boat was kind of unique because of it’s architecture. It could stand the pressure of the ice, which for example Shackeltons boat couldn’t. Also interessting to see all the different gear they used, all really heavy, wooden gear and woolen clothes. Nobody would ever do such an expedition with all that gear this days.
• drove to the campsite

The campsite was just inside the woods, next to the tracks of Holmenkollen. We had three big tipis where everyone slept in. I thought this was a great chance to be together in bigger groups and spend time with people you don’t know that well yet. We started a nice fire and everyone had dinner. Michael brought some slides, so we tested them out down the big hills, which was great fun. At around 9pm everyone went early to bed. I had a really nice and warm sleep in the tent. I love my sleeping bag!! I felt a bit sick that week because of being away the whole time, but that feeling was gone by the next morning. Saturday:

After having breakfast Saedis, Line and me decided to spend the day in the city. As there was just relay and a lot of fog, it wasn’t worth buying tickets, which where quite expensive. We got a hitchhike downtown and went straight to the National Libary, where we went to toilet and brushed our teeth. There we met Jill, Amy, Dom and Adrian. After hanging out for a bit, we walked around the city to the Parliament, the National Theatre and castle. The whole square next to the Parliament was like a small festival, with a food market, stage for concerts and some big screens for public viewing. We tasted every different food at the market and got a free dinner within that 🙂 At around 3pm we went to a huge tipi, where we sat down and watched the relay race. It was great atmosphere in there, most of the people were norwegian and everyone was really into that competition. You could really feel that biathlon is a national sport in Norway. The atmosphere got even better after Norway won gold. In Subway we filled up our stomachs before watching the medal ceremony. There were so many people! Two couples came all the way from Stavanger and thery were really nice and maybe also a bit drunk. Everyone of them had a flask with Jäger, Cognac or Whisky inside. They let us, or better: they kind of forced us to wave the norwegian flag, wear a weird hat.  It was much fun! As we were pretty tired from the walking and the night we went back by t-bane to the campsite. The boys had built a kicker with a fire behind it and started to jump naked on skis over it. Everyone was laughing and it was a perfect end for a nice day.

Sunday:

There is not much to say about Sunday. After breakfast and putting down the tents we went  back home by car at around 12am.

Personal outcome:

The museum was really interesting for me as I read some books about the Shackelton expedition, so it was kind of related to it. I can better understand how difficult and hard such a expedition must have been in that days. Beside of that, the trip was more a sightseeing and fun thing, so I don’t really gained any outdoor or leadership skills. I thought we would visit the ski museum aswell to learn and understand better the skiing history of Norway. As there was only one relay Saturday it wasn’t worth buying tickets. I was actually really disappointed and in the beginning also a bit upset, because I didn’t really see the point of driving there all the way if there was nearly no program. Of course we could have gone skiing, but the conditions were not that good and that was not what the trip was about. We could have picked the weekend before, where there were more competitions. But still even though I didn’t want to go there at all in the beginning, it turned out to be a good trip, because of nice evenings around the fire.