Life Lately...

First off, I apologize for not writing the last month!  I don't know where the time went, February went by way too fast.  Here's a little update of what we were up to...

On February 6th we decided to throw a Superbowl party with all of our North American friends.  We had a few unexpected and drunk Norwegians on the team stop by as well.  Sunday and Monday were 2 of the 3 days the team had off this month so the guys took advantage of the time away from the ice.  The game started at 12:30am(Mon) our time and we started the party at about 10:30pm (Sun).  Gino and I made up a big batch of sloppy joes and the other wives brought a few appetizers which made for a great Superbowl spread.  Since everything in the town shuts down on Sunday, (grocery stores, shops, restaurants, etc)  we had planned to go to the liqour store on Saturday afternoon.  After a little workout and grocery shopping we headed into town to grab some wine and the liquor store was CLOSED.  We didn't realize that it's only open M-F until 5pm and Sat until 3pm, so we made our way back to the grocery store to grab some beer instead.  I was a little bummed and had my heart set on a bottle of vino, but I was able to snatch up some pear cider beer and Gino was happy with his Budweiser and Guiness.
Gino made a Superbowl board where everyone had to put in 50 NOK/person which is about $10.  Winners got 200 NOK ($32) if they had the right score at the end of the game, 50 ($10) NOK for the 1st and 3rd quarter and 100 ($16) NOK for halftime.  Basically had the chance of winning 400 NOK or about $75.  That made the game a little more exciting for me, HA.  We had 2 Packer fans in the house and everyone else was rooting for Steelers.  People stayed until about 2:30am, just after the half time show, which i have to say was horrible!  I'm a big BEP fan and they did not sound so great.  Gino stayed up for the rest of the game while I cleaned and went to bed. 
The weather has been fairly "warm" for us.  It hasn't been below zero the whole month of Feb usually between about 10 and 30 degrees.  We have had a ton of snow though!  Probably not much different from MN.  It's snowed over half the days this month.  We don't get the ice, sleet and wind, just snow which i can handle. Still nice enough to take our walks into town and very very pretty especially when we are blessed with a little sun.

Gino and I celebrated Valentine's Day on Friday 11th, he always has late practice on Monday nights.  Gino made dinner reservations at a new restaurant in town at 6pm, so we had the day to kill.  We walked into town to run some errands and ended up stopping at a coffee shop to grab some drinks and read for a few hours.  We've done this a hand full of times and is one of my favorite things!  Reading in the coffee shop while playing scrabble on our Ipod touch.  The coffee shop closed at 5pm, like basically everything else in town, and we didn't want to walk back to the apartments only to come back down 45 minutes later.  So, we walked into one of the little grocery stores that was still open and looked at all of the Norwegian food.  Usually when we go grocery shopping, we're in and out pretty quick.  It was kind of interesting to actually walk through the meat isle and read all the different types of meat they have.  We wrote down a few that we had bought before thinking that it was ground turkey. When we checked the translation at home later we found out that it was ground pig.  Not a big deal but strange that we thought we were eating turkey this whole time.  Back to the restaurant....  It's attatched to a hotel and has a bar on the rooftop with spectacular views of Lillehammer, mountains, and Lake Mjosa. The restaurant is underground and reminded me of an old Irish/English pub.  Everything was made of wood and all the tables had long candle sticks lit up.

 The menu had everything from tenderloin to burritos. Gino had the ribs and I had the tenderloin.  It was delicious!  After a few beers, we decided to head back home.  We hadn't taken a walk outside at night all winter and hadn't realized how many stars you can see here.  It was beautiful!  We got onto the topic of space and our galaxy and how big it actually is.  I don't know if it was the beer or what but the 10 min walk from town to our apartment turned into 30 because we kept stopping to look at the stars. When we got home, I had chocolate covered strawberries ready for dessert.  All in all it was a great night and I'm glad I was able to spend it with my hubby:)

On Saturday the team had a little scrimmage with alumni and a few men's league players instead of an actual practice.  I guess they do it every year and fans come to watch the old men play ha ha.  After the game, there was a social at the Olympic arena with dinner and drinks.  The girls decided to pass on the game, but we met the guys afterwards for the social.  After the social, a bunch of the guys were going out to Brenneriet, which is a bar/dance club.  With Sunday being a day off for them, Gino and I decided to go out.  We went over to one of the players houses for some drinks before heading to the club. 

Gino, Me, Vegard before the club

We left for the club at about 11pm and even though we were about 4 blocks away it was freezing, so we all hopped in cars/cabs.  When we got there it was packed!  The team gets in free, which was so nice and we were able to save 30 bucks on a cover charge.  We checked our coats and went to find the rest of our group.  The club is a brazillian steakhouse by day and night club by night.  We went there to eat once, but it looked completely different as a night club and much bigger!  


It was fun to go out and hang with the rest of the team.  We are usually with the North American group but this night, we were with everyone and it was nice to get to know some of the other guys.  They are all so great and seem to be really happy to be playing with Gino.  I could tell when I would talk to them one on one how much they respect him as a player and captain.  It was an expensive night for us, but well worth it!  I hope we can get out again before the end of the year.

This past Wed 23rd, was the last day off before playoffs start so we decided to do something fun.  We got a group together and headed down to Nikkers sports bar.  One half of Nikkers is a coffee shop with a cozy fireplace and patio overlooking the river and the other side is a little American style sports bar with shuffle board and dart boards. 



Road to Nikkers, its on the left hand side



The ladies

Gino by the shuffle board

We ordered a few drinks, had appetizers, and just hung out.  It felt like we were in MN!   The guys played shuffle board for an hour or so and then we headed back to the apartements.

The last regular season game is on Sunday 27th and then playoffs start the following Thursday.  I've said this over and over again, but it's crazy how fast the season has gone!  Gino will be writing a little playoff update in a week or so.  Stay tuned...
We decided since we're over in Europe we should take advantage of the situation and plan one last trip after playoffs.  I'm excited to travel a bit more but the downside is we'll have to book just a few days in advance since we won't know exactly when playoffs are over.  But, I've been doing my research, so that when the time comes we can book!  We both wanted somewhere that is fairly easy for us to get to and decided on a little combination trip to Brussels, Brugge, and Amsterdam.  It's funny, a roundtrip plane ticket from Oslo to Amsterdam is almost double a one way to Brussels and then taking the train to Brugge and then Amsterdam including the hotel stays.  So that's why we are adding a few more cities to the trip.  We have a book that we got from one of my girlfriends, the shows the world's must see destinations.  Amsterdam was in there as well as Brussels and Brugge, Belgium. Brugge is a little medieval town built on water with beautiful canals.  We were told that visiting Belgium and Amsterdam in the Spring is the best time to go because its tulip season.  Here are a few pics I found online.  I think it will be the perfect end to wonderful year overseas.

Ill write more during playoffs with a few updates.  Hope all is well!