I made my first trip to the Northern city Tromsø on the weekend. We had a game against FK Senja, a team located on a small Island near Tromsø. It was definitely a long travel day for us. Some teammates picked me up at around 7 am on Saturday and we drove to Oslo Gardermoen airport. The flight left at 8:50 am and is normally a 2 hour flight, but we arrived a bit earlier than expected. Once we landed in Tromsø, we drove for about 2 hours and stopped for a pre-game meal at a restaurant pretty much in the middle of nowhere. But the food was quite good; Chicken, rice and salad. After lunch we drove for about another hour and we finally reached Senja. It was surprisingly quite hot, not what you would expect when traveling North of the Arctic Circle.
We won the game 4-3. It was a really exciting and back and forth game. Overall a great result for the team, it’s never easy to travel that far for a game. We scored the winning goal in injury time and everyone started to celebrate like mad, when the ball went in. My team was pretty pumped and following the final whistle, all the players ran out of the stadium and I wasn’t to sure what was going on. The sea was right beside the stadium and I guess someone had mentioned before the game that if we won, we all had to swim in the Norwegian Sea. So the whole team went for a swim, everyone in full kit. The water wasn’t actually that cold and it felt great, because it was so hot out! I think it was 92 F, which is very uncommon there. Following the game we drove straight back to Tromsø and checked in at our hotel. We stayed at the Thon hotel downtown and it was really nice. Because this was our last game before our summer break (3 weeks off), we went out for pizza and then went out in the city as a team. It was a fun night and a good chance for me to get to know my teammates better off the field. In Tromsø, they have 24 hours of sunlight in the summer, which I experienced living in the North in Bodø last year. But it’s still a shock everytime you see it. We came outside at 3 am and it was completely light out, it’s really a weird feeling. It’s pretty unbelievable how far North Tromsø actually is. Its about 560 KM further North, than Bodø is. If you were to draw a line across the world to Canada, you would find yourself North of the Yukon Territories in the Beaufort Sea. Check out the map of Norway below:
On Sunday morning, we had a great breakfast at the hotel and I walked around the city with a few teammates, before we caught a taxi to the airport in the early afternoon. I got home at about 7 pm on Sunday and I was completely exhausted. It was definitely a long weekend. I’m really glad I got to check out Tromsø though, its always exciting to check out a new place. We now have the next two weeks off training and three weeks without any games. I’m looking forward to my time off, but I would rather continue training and playing! I’ll be looking to establish myself in the team when the season resumes and I’m looking forward to getting back to training already.
Robbie
