The BIG game

Yeah, well I have had my hard times. But the best thing to concentrate on when trying to make hard time easier is… football!
It started with buying tickets to the European qualification Iceland against Spain. After a short council, me and Frédéric decided to walk the line, paint our faces and join the crazy Icelandic crew.

Some days later I made a deal with some of the Spanish exchange students. If Spain would win, I would have to repaint my face with the Spanish flag before I went out. If Iceland would win, the Spanish would be the ones who were to paint their faces with the Icelandic flag. Yes of course most things were in their favour but still; this was not a very bad deal for me. I could imagine myself with the Spanish flag in my face going to a Spanish fiesta with some happy Spanish people. I could also image myself enjoying the sight of my Spanish friends with the Icelandic flag in their faces. Why they agreed on this? Well, they were pretty sure it would be an easy victory.

Happening number three was the mission from the newspaper back home, Upsala Nya Tidning. They wanted a story about Icelandic football and asked if I could find some good stuff. First I thought I didn’t have time for this because of all my home reading. Then I asked my self: what would I prefer to do? How would I like to remember my time in Iceland? Me sitting in my room, studying? Or me meeting some Icelandic people talking football? Quite an easy choice and two days later I meet the manager of KR:s in the clubs boardroom. KR is the biggest, oldest and most successful football club in Iceland. The Icelandic describe the club as “The Manchester United of Iceland, either you love this club, or you hate it.”
The story was published the 8th of September.

So if you ever want to learn some stuff about Icelandic football, you should try to get the Saturday’s edition of the paper. Or ask me. I did learn some very interesting stuff, that’s for sure.

This week, the University also organised a football tournament.
We put up a team with one Spanish, one Italian, one Swiss, one Norwegian, one Swedish and three Germans. It sounded like a very good team. Then we did our first mistake. We let the Italian take care of the organisation.
There was some uncertainty if we had subscribed to the tournament.
We were informed that the tournament started one hour later then it did.
And then neither the Italian or the Spanish guy showed up. It was a bit bad because apparently our organiser (the Italian) had given us a team-name, but none of the rest of us knew this name so we did not know when we were suppose to play.
Finally the Italian came, and even before we had our first match (I have still not heard anything about the Spanish one). The problem was that the game now started two hours later then it was expected and new problems occurred…

Then finally, the big thing:
Iceland vs Spain.
We did the preparations. We ate the football food. We ran to the bus (to get the feeling of being a real sportsman). We put on some Icelandic shirts. We stood up and sang the national anthem. And we screamed.
I think I let the pictures tell the rest of my story.

Finally I got some use for my big mirror.

Emilia did us some good football dinner

In the 86th minute Spain scores 1-1 and saves some of the Spanish honour. The ball is just passing the goalkeeper.

Emila was happy afterwards.

This guy from Northern Ireland might just not be as happy on Wednesday, when Iceland is up against his country. Linda, on the (or maybe his?) other hand – is always happy.

While some of us went home, me and Frédéric went on for some more singing. The only sad thing is that we did not at all understand what we were singing.

Then our Icelandic friend Matthias came along. He is known to be a calm guy.

Frozen but happy, the Spanish girls went on to their fiesta.