Coming back to Oslo in August felt like picking up exactly where I'd left off. I moved back into the same apartment. There was a week of quarantine and a new set of restrictions to navigate, but underneath all of that, it felt like a new chapter opening up — and I was ready for it.
Alongside playing with Vålerenga, I picked up my first job abroad at a bakery, working the counter and talking with customers all day. It turned into a crash course in Norwegian — helped along by a couple of self-paced courses, and by simply being around the team and the language every day. The schedule was scattered: some days a five-hour bakery shift followed by evening training at the rink, some days opening the shop at four thirty in the morning, some days closing. But being immersed in the language and the people did more for how at home I felt in Norway than almost anything else that season.
That year also brought my first Norwegian Christmas. I wasn't planning to go home for the holidays, and one of my teammates invited me up to Tromsø to celebrate with her family. I saw the northern lights for the first time — a special 26th birthday gift. That morning, before sunrise, we went to a sauna on the water, mixing in some cold ocean dips. Tromsø in winter is dark almost all day, and I don't think I've ever felt as tired as I did that week. But in the hours the sun rose above the horizon, I managed to get some beautiful pictures — which sparked my love for photography.
I met my now-husband partway through that first half of the season, in November. We went on a few dates, and then the second COVID shutdown hit, effectively shutting down all sports below the professional level, including the club he was coaching. Between shifts at the bakery and training at the rink, the two of us spent that stretch hiking, skiing, and skating on the ocean — small, simple ways of experiencing Norway together. [More to come here through photos.]
In March, an on-ice injury sent me for an MRI, then to a specialist, and not long after, into surgery for an MCL reconstruction. That injury is what actually brought him and me much closer. He was waiting at my apartment when I got home with the news that I needed major surgery, he offered to drive me to and from the specialist appointments before the surgery was even scheduled, and insisted that I spend the first week after surgery at his place to recover. Recovery itself came with a nine-month timeline before I'd be back on the ice, and I knew a long road was ahead of me.
Around June, he was offered a contract in Germany's Penny DEL. He knew how much I loved life in Norway and told me that if I wanted to come with him, he'd be glad to have me there — careful not to frame it as pressure. If I didn't want to come, he said, he'd understand completely.
With nine months of rehab ahead of me anyway, I took the leap. I made the move to Germany with him.