Ice hockey is a big part of the Finnish culture, the Finnish National Team won the world championship 2019 in Slovakia. In Turku is also a Team, the Turun Palloseura (TPS), currently on place 9. in the Finnish Ice hockey league Liiga. On Friday they played against Tappara Tampere, who are first place. Steffi, Daniel (a friend of Steffi, currently studying in Helsinki), Mari and I went to the game on Friday. It was Steffis first Ice hockey game ever, she´s more into Football, Danis second game and Maris first game as well, they don´t really have Ice hockey in South Africa... I went to some games in my hometown in Germany before, our team the Starbulls Rosenheim are currently in the second league on third place. I always loved going to games there. But back to Finland. We met some other exchange students at Gatorade Center, who coincidently sat next to us. The atmosphere was amazing, we had a good view at the fan row, who really supported the whole game with drums and shouts. Personally, I get really passionate about the match and become really loud sometimes depending on how the team I´m voting for is doing, but I tried to hold back, because the Finns around me weren´t really vocal. Of course, at this game my sympathy was with Turku! Unfortunately, they weren’t very good in this game… but I mean they played against the first place, it would have been really amazing if they had won the game. In the end they lost 7:2 and every TPS fan was quite sad. If I compare this game with the others I went to in Germany, I have to say that I think that the games at home are a bit more aggressive, just like Turku was playing in the third period, and the show when the players get on the ice the first time is way bigger. In Rosenheim they have two guys dressed as a bull on the Ice and a huge inflatable bull where the come out of and every player is introduced by name, here I didn’t even notice that the players came on the Ice. But all in all, the evening was really nice and I enjoyed my time there! I will definitely come back and watch another game!
