My apartment looks north-west toward a horizon on which the famed Oslo Ski Jump sits at Holmenkollen. This weekend was the annual ski jump competition so I had to go check it out.

My friend Alex Wilde came along together with her gorgeous 14-month old baby Mali. Alex is also from Wellington, went to secondary school with my sister Evelyn, was best friends with the sister of one of my first boyfriends, has a mother who was mayor of the city in the 1980s, and so on. Kiwis are good at finding so many different connections! Alex has lived in Oslo for the past six years since marrying a Norwegian she met while they were both serving in their respective countries’ foreign service at the United Nations in New York (New Zealand diplomats tend to hang out with the other ‘N’s, like the Netherlands, etc). When my sister learned I was coming to Oslo she urged me to get in touch with Alex. It turns out our organizations share the same building, so I see her daily in the canteen…

Anyway, we caught the metro train up the mountain then walked the final hill together pushing Mali in her pram. Over 40,000 fans were seated around the ski jump and on the surrounding hillside, many decked out in their national colours with plenty of Norwegian flag-waving and silly plastic viking helmets. Somehow we managed to meet Kiwis and Aussies at every turn though, including an obnoxious young Australian male with their awful flag who took off his shirt to reveal the word “OI” as in oi! written on his back. More suited to a rugby match in Brisbane than the ski jump…

It was clear and sunny so we could see the jumpers preparing at the top by shuffling their way to the center of the run. Then they slid down the track at speeds of over 100 kph before jumping what to me seemed like an enormous and stomach-churning distance.

This was an international contest with plenty of Finnish, Austrian, and American participants, but the Norwegian competitors always received the loudest applause. And who won? I believe it was Adam Malysz (28) from Poland. At least he wasn’t Swedish.