I uploaded a selection of the photos I took during my short vacation to Oslo, Norway. Enjoy!

Just a quick impression from Norway - Sørkedalen, while I have found internet access near a small shop. There’s a lot of snow around and over last night 20 to 30 cm more snow appeared on top of the already present 100 cm.

Still suffering from an utterly evil cold and worse is, today’s my birthday. Hope it’s gone until the weekend… the cold at least - I would wish birthdays extend to birthweeks in such cases. All the colleagues at work express their worries, but I suspect there is more worry about the missing cakes now. I promise, I bring them on Monday!

But at least I got a few more things for my journey to Norway next week: a new Mammut windstopper cap (I wish I had that in January when I was cycling to my office through -10° C), a new Icebreaker Bodyfit 150 shirt as well as new warm socks from Falke, T1 and T4. One pair is expedition level, you never know what kind of weather you get to know in Scandinavia.

Norway won 1:0 against the German national football team yesterday.

Gratulasjon! Could this be the kickstart for Norwegian football?

Norway played a really good match, fighting like lions against lucky Poland and lost unluckily in the last seconds. Fourteen seconds… 30:30… Norway is in the possession of the ball, they now play with seven field players an no goal keeper, everything’s set to score the last goal in the game.

Oh no, Kristian Kjelling botches during the offence and Polish player Artur Siódmiaka catches the ball and throws it with a wide curve over the whole field into Norway’s empty goal. 31:30! Not only ending Norway’s dreams of reaching the semifinales, but also shattering the last hope of Germany to get there, too. The German team needed a draw between Poland and Norway to get on.

This match was really a heart attack match. In the end I jumped of my chair heavily cursing after the ball landed inside Norway’s goal. Well, understandable when two of my personal favourites are eliminated from the tournament.

Now all my hope and wishes rest on the Danish!

Shamelessly stealing the headline from Aftenposten. In a very exciting match, Norway won against Germany with a close 25:24. Gratulasjon!

I won’t comment much on the referees, but it seemed the German and Norwegian trainers were not very amused about them.

Sadly, this match was overshadowed by the injury of Michael Kraus, which according to the TV slow motion looked a lot like a very bad ligament rupture. Best player on German side was the goalkeeper Silvio Heinevetter, on Norwegian side Håvard Tvedten as well as their goalkeeper Steinar Ege.

Germany has to win against Denmark next Tuesday to get to the semifinales now. And with the chance they got now, Norway has to win against Poland to get through as well. Furthermore, with Hungary’s win over Sweden, both, Sweden and Hungary, don’t have a chance to reach the semifinales.

And concerning Norwegian names (and general moderation of the match), the RTL moderator was worse, a lot worse than his counterpart from DSF.