National Team Break

God Klevd (Norweigan for Good Evening) European leagues were off from games from last Saturday till this Tuesday in order for each countries National team to practice together and play some exibition games. So our team practiced all week and we were given Friday and Saturday off. So, on a last minute decision Friday morning I took a bus to the Oslo airport and went to Helsinki Finland. Troy Milam, a good buddy who plays in northern Finland, took a train down to Helsinki and met up with me. Once we got to Helsinki, found each other, paid tribute to the US and ate at McDonalds, and looked around Finlands capital we decided to go on an adventure. Another American named Dan Hacker plays in Helsinki, so we met up with him and went to the port of Helsinki and took a ferry over the Baltic sea to main land Europe. The ferry ride took about 2 hours and docked in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Once we got there, Dan made a couple calls to a teammate that is from Estonia and he set us up with a hotel and came to show us around the city. Estonia was officially a country again in 1991 after the Soviet Union fell so a lot of the buildings looked very Russian. The city is small, the whole country only has 1.3 million people, so it didn't feel like another big city it had a small town feel. The people are very proud of their country, which I thought was cool, and they loved telling us about it. I learned something there that explained the name for our city of Livonia. Livonia was the name of the Russian Region that is now Estonia and Latvia.. hence Livonia. The protectors of the region were called the Swords of Livonia or the Livonia Knights!! I thought that was awesome, I told them that I was too once a Livonia Knight, they laughed but liked that we had a city named after their region. We looked around the city for a while, had a authentic Estonia meal, I had elk, Troy and the Estonians had a pigs thigh that was deep fried, and Dan had wild boar, and tasted some of the local brews. Everything was good, and we had a lot of fun, the picture of the three of us is in the morning we were not that good about taking pictures, we are guys though. The next day we took the boat back, had lunch in Helsinki and then Troy and I went back to the train station. It was a fun 24 hours!!