I have already mentioned that the Norwegian media and I are not getting along too well. So far, I have had three run ins with the television companies, and on every occasion TV affairs have not reflected well upon me! Three years ago I "starred" in a music video, along with my team, because we had made it to the Norwegian Cup Finals. Two weeks ago a Television company had me walking along a Norwegian street with Ella, singing the Norwegian national anthem. I do not know the Norwegian national anthem.

Then, there was last Sunday!!! On Sunday 14th September, the team and I were referees for the Hege Riise Classic, an all girls one-day Soccer Tournament that Hege Riise, one of the best female soccer pioneers of all time, and my Team Strommen Coach, hold every year. The situation was quite worrying for me even before we started, as I am an awful referee. I frequently find myself watching the game and picking one side that I want to win more than the other .... I know: Bad! Well, on this particular day the refereeing was the easiest part of the whole event.

It turned out that as part of the events, Team Strommen was due to play a televised match against a men's team. The day before we had played a game in larvik, so I was rather annoyed about having to play the fixture. I was exhausted, and not looking forward to the occasion.

However, that is when the details of the event started to slip out. It turned out that the team we were due to play were part of a new TV series in Norway, where they gather together 20 of the nerdiest, dorkiest guys they can find, pay a famous coach to train them for a couple of months and then they pit them against one of the Norwegian professional men's sides. The series has yet to air, but I guess they were about half way through all their filming. and were coming out to meet us for, what they thought, were going to be "dates." The day before they had all been given makeovers, so they were all dressed to the nines and toting roses when they walked off their bus and were greeted by us... sweaty women in full kit. Feeling mortified does not quite cover how I felt at the time.

The game was a farce. The guys were super nice, but they were not athletic in the least sense of the word, and even though most of them will probably make a major contribution to the business world, or invent something to save the world, somewhere down the line, they did not receive many athletic genes.

With our centre defender D (all five feet of her) and me in midfield, refusing to do anything more than jog, we beat them 7-0 after two 15 minute halves. The good news is that this whole match and affair saved me from further refereeing. Thank you Norway TV.

On the 16th September, D and I borrowed my friend Linn's car and headed for the border. No I was not running away. We planned to go to Sweden to stock up on food that is reasonably priced. Norway has a ton of good things going for it, but the country's prices for food and consumer items, is not one of them. For example, in a television advert for two medium pizzas to be delivered, the cost was the equivalent to $60 Canadian!!!!! All this to say that spending the gas money to drive the two hours to the border was well worth it in my eyes.

The drive itself turned out to be an adventure. We never really did become lost, but there were a couple of times when we temporarily disoriented and we did take a few wrong turns, including one where we ended up on a dirt track. We finally made the frontier in a little under two hours and spent quite a bit of time going round the Swedish shops. This Swedish town was only a small border town and only had about 5 stores on its main street. But, we stocked up on edibles.

By the time our brief visit to Sweden was approaching an end, I was feeling a little tired so decided to get a coffee to perk me up a little. We stopped at a little cafe and ordered two lattes. They looked amazing. The cafe was a cozy little place and we were impressed with the free bread that they gave us on the side, as well as all the little bowls of different kinds of sugar they had available: Lumped; white; brown; fake; raw; all these in a bowl, and a wonderful selection. D and I went basic. She had one teaspoon of sugar from the bowl, while I threw three lumps into mine. I figured that if the coffee did not wake me up, then the sugar would.

I took the first sip, ingesting mainly foam, and even then, I almost threw up all over the table. I forced the drink down, valiantly I might add, because my sip tasted remarkably as though I was drinking part of the Atlantic Ocean. D and I had erroneously put a huge amount of salt into our coffees. The coffee was horrendous. We almost died laughing at ourselves, but the fact of the matter was that I needed my coffee.

Red in the face and embarrassed, I went back up to the counter and explained how dumb D is, and that she was foreign, and could we please have replacement drinks. The male barista was kind enough not to laugh in our faces and replaced the drink with only a slight curling of the lips. He may have been on the verge of smiling, but he might as well have laughed. All three of us knew he was going to be laughing and telling all his friends as soon as we had left. Who else, but the Swedes, puts a big bowl of salt (in all its various permutations), in the middle of the table where the sugar should be? Honestly, the more I think about it, the more convinced Iam that this was Sweden's fault, not ours!

Bonne Nuit. I am going hiking with Amy tomorrow, so who knows what adventures await?

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