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RHIAN'S SOCCER JOURNALS:

FADING & FJORDS: STROMMEN & WESTERN NORWAY 5 Nov 2008

We lost our last game of the season on Sunday 2nd November to fifth ranked Arna-Bjornar by 1-0. It is sometimes hard to explain why these things happen, when this is a game we should have won. There is no doubt that every single person on Team Strommen's squad looked tired and nothing seemed to go right for us. We faded right from the start.

The heroes of the game were definitely the two goalies. I think that both had excellent games and the score would have been very different had either of them not played superbly. Lindsey was outstanding in our net and saved our butts countless times. I feel terribly for her, as she did everything she possibly could to give us a victory, and we let her down. It is not a good feeling.

The Arna-Bjornar goalie is the Norwegian National keeper and she made some incredibly acrobatic saves. The difference came down to one of their forwards managing to lob the ball over Lindsey's head as she came out of the net, and we were nowhere close to support her.

After the match, we were presented with our silver medals from the Topserrien League. It is a real honour, but it is hard to be too excited about the awards just after suffering a pretty painful defeat. It would have been good to close out the season with no losses since the mid-season break ,and this is what we were aiming for. We knew we had the silver medal in the bag before this last game, and even though we all said the right things in the locker-room, and then said them again out on the field, this attitude did not transfer to our legs and our execution.

We performed pretty dismally, and we found it hard to get passionate and motivated out on the field, which of course, is where it counts. We obviously thought we had nothing on the line, and could cruise to a win. For this reason, I am looking at the loss as a good thing. Ironic as this may sound, I welcome going into the Cup Finals fresh off a loss. We can now remember what it feels like to lose and how awful it is. Such motivation can only help us in the long run.

Just getting to the finals is not good enough. Team Strommen is a good, maybe even a great, squad. We are going to the Cup Finals to win. If we did not know this before the last match, we definitely know it now. We had a good reminder on Sunday.

I didn't hang about after the game last weekend, as Diana and I had made plans with Per, one of our friends (and the site's Norwegian correspondent) to drive out west. We left right after the game and drove for over 5 hours to somewhere near Molde.

We drove through Lillehammer on the way, and we stayed the night with some of Per's friends who were nice enough to put us up, and to put up with us. They had two young children and even though I would have enjoyed talking to them if my Norwegian was better, I had to content myself with staring at them and making funny faces. Without a doubt these children now think that Canadians are very strange and I think they were happy to see us go. We are still taking our Norwegian classes and working at learning the language, but I wish we could speak more.

On Monday, we drove to Alesund, on the tip of western Norway and enjoyed a good hike through the city, as well as a drive through a spectacularly beautiful area. We then drove back along a different route and took the ferry across to Eidsdal. It was not a long voyage, but still a great deal of fun.

Finally, we drove through the mountains to the top of the Geiranger Fjord, and this has to be one of the most spectacular sights I have ever seen. In the summer this Fjord is full of cruise ships, but at this wintry time of year the place is deserted. I loved it, and I LOVED that we didn't see anyone the whole time we were there.

The drive down to the little town was winding and full of switchbacks and a challenging drive. It was an interesting experience to gradually come closer and closer to the bottom of the valley with every turn. You can read about roads like this, but rarely do you actually drive on one. Once at the bottom, we started going back up again, again with a road full of hairpin bends. To get home, we had to drive over and through the mountains. I am not sure what this range of mountains is called, but on Google map, it is referred to as Romsdal.

The drive was a tough one for Per. All D and I had to do was sit and enjoy the scenery, but there was plenty of snow at that elevation, and the road was really slippery. The only good thing was that we had the road to ourselves and for an hour and a bit we had a great drive up and through the range until reaching Grotli. The name is ironic, and some might even call this place a town.

The mountains were not only beautiful to look at, but really interesting. There were little houses, or cabins, everywhere up there, and Per told us that in the summer, the farmers bring their sheep to these mountain pastures so that they have more room to graze. I don't know why, but I find sheep farming interesting - it must be my Welsh background!

I had thought that this type of nomadic farming was no longer used in most developed Western nations. This is probably proof of my ignorance, but in my mind so much of farming in Europe is industrial and mechanized. The very concept of moving animals to better mountain pastures is foreign to me.

This drive to the western coast of Norway was long and arduous (at least for Per), but it was also beautiful and a lot of fun. It was a whirlwind trip, but well worth the effort. I didn't drive at all during the trip, yet even I was completely exhausted, so a big thank you to Per is definitely in order for his sterling driving skills.