Cry, Cry, Cry
Iceland is a funny nation. We are few, we aren't successful in many sports, but in the once we are we get very proud. One of the few is handball.
Most of you may now know that the Handball World Cup is going on right now in Germany. To prove my point of the English speaking world doesn't know about this, I can tell you that there is only one nation there who speak English as their native language... It's Australia and their participation is basically a joke. Their first Handball tournament was the 2000 Olympics in Sidney where prior to the games they advertised in local newspapers for players. The sport was a big hit over there because many people only got tickets to that event and once they got there they began to like it.
Iceland has had a very good tournament despite a rather slow start. We won Australia in the first match, then lost surprisingly to Ukraine so we had to win the World Champions France in the last match of our group. I've never seen the Icelandic team play as well as that game and we won quite easily. We got through to the second group and after that we went to play Denmark in quarter finals.
The game was even most of it and for 55 out 60 minutes the difference wasn't more than 1 goal. Eventually we drew dramatically and the game went into over time. With 20 seconds and all even we got a chance to score and our player hit the pole. Our old reigning country got forward and scored.
You couldn't be mad, it was basically luck that one this match. But you should see this country now everybody is talking about the same thing. Handball has incredible influence on the mood over here. For example the night life is incredibly more fun if we win than if we loose. People just don't go then.
At least we will be above the Norwegians!
Last I want to recommend a band called Peter, Bjorn & John. They are great.
Hasta la proxima,
Úlli
