The wait finally ended. Last summer Bryan and I bought tickets for the Canada-Slovenia and USA-Latvia matches at the 2005 Hockey World Championships in Innsbruck. Our seats could not have been better. We sat directly behind the bench and had a perfect view of the games. The Canada-Slovenia game wasn't very exciting due to the 8-0 blowout in favour of Canada. The number of Canada fans was overwhelming, although I don't believe most of them were actually Canadian. The guy next next to us explained that it's German mentality to cheer for the favoured team instead than their own country.

Between games we bought tickets from a scalper for the following day's Sweden-Finland game.

The USA-Latvia match was much better. The arena was packed with crazy Latvian fans who went insane when they scored the first goal. Bryan was naturally cheering for Team USA and was therefore taunted by two older Latvian guys. They had their few minutes of fun, but Bryan had the last laugh with a 3-1 victory (see photo below). It was disgusting that the USA national anthem was jeered.

The following day we wandered around Innsbruck and killed time. We had planned to watch the Ukraine-Denmark game in the beer tent, but technical problems with the television projector forced us to buy cheap standing-room tickets (good call, Bryan). Bryan and I randomly picked teams and wagered a beer.

The Swedish-Finland tickets had a small complication. The scalper had sold us "press-only" tickets and I was briefly worried that we would be removed. Fortunately, luck was on our side and we were bumped to great seats in the fifth row for a fast and intense 5-1 win for Sweden.

In the end we regretted not staying longer and seeing more games. Last night was the Canada-USA match but unfortunately it was not broadcast at home because all stations were focussed on the Switzerland-Germany game (Canada & Switzerland both won). Bryan and I are already talking about next year in Latvia so that we can laugh at our Latvian friends again (see photo). Go CANADA!