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Author: Hanneke

I started my first blog when I left the Netherlands (my home country) for an internship in Alaska in 2004, to keep my friends and family updated on my adventures over there. Little did I know it would be more than 13 years before I'd move back to the Netherlands! I spent a year in Toulouse (France) before starting a PhD in meteorology at the University of East Anglia in Norwich (UK) in 2005. That's when I started this current blog, first in Dutch but I soon switched to English. I really enjoyed life in the UK, and was actually planning to stay there after my PhD, but "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans" and I ended up moving to Tromsø in Northern Norway in 2009. Tromsø is a photographer's dream, surrounded by spectacular mountains, with the light ever changing from the midnight sun in summer to the dark days compensated by aurora-filled nights in winter. I learnt Norwegian and got a job as a weather forecaster - I got thrown in at the deep end, doing radio interviews and speaking with fishermen with way-too-strong dialects straight from the beginning, before I was anywhere near fluent in Norwegian :D I survived though, and slowly started to do some research on the side. I got more and more involved in research projects and in August 2015 I moved 2000 km south, to Oslo where I started working 100% as a researcher. A year after moving to Oslo, I met Michiel at a music festival in Brussels :) and we started to travel very frequently between Oslo and Rotterdam, where he lives. You can't do that forever though, and I soon realized I found the perfect "excuse" to finally move back home, something I had been considering many times before. So since July 2017, I'm living in Rotterdam! I'm actually taking some time off before finding a new job, and I'm looking forward to lots of adventures in the near future - so stay tuned!
First aurora of the season

First aurora of the season

Well, for me at least! Though last week we did see some, but it was very faint and not worth taking a photo. Tonight for a short time they were quite active and I managed to get a few pictures from our balcony. Thanks to Sevim who warned me!

Arctic skies

Arctic skies

Last Saturday the weather forecast was looking good. The days before we had a lot of snow, so we decided to get up early and go snowshoeing. We started before sunrise, which is not that difficult when sunrise is at 10:20! At this time of year, the sky often has very beautiful pastel colours, like the pink in the photos below – I call them “Arctic skies” as I have never seen them anywhere else 🙂

Apart from 2 people very close to where we parked the car, we didn’t meet anyone else all day. We did see a herd of about 100 reindeer though! Unfortunately they were too far away for a photo. We couldn’t go very far, as they days are very short now and sunset was at 12:40 – so less than 2.5 hours of daylight! Below you can see the photographer at work, and the resulting photo 😉

Paul climbed on top of this huge boulder…

Since it’s so early in the season, the rivers and lakes are not fully frozen yet. Luckily we found a bridge over the river that crosses this valley!

Here you can see the same river lower down in the valley. I love the boulders all covered in snow!

We played around taking photos for a while, until it got too dark and we had to go back to the car.

It was a fun day! We got back to the car by 14:00 when it was getting dark already. The good thing about this is that you still have time to do some other things, like going to the shops (they all close really early on saturdays).

Below is a photo taken after sunset last Sunday… beautiful! The other photo is the hammock -or rather hanging chair – that we bought in Amsterdam (in an amazing shop called Maranon). I’ve always wanted to have one, and now we finally have a flat where it fits perfectly. It’s REALLY comfy, I could sleep in it 🙂

Yesterday we gave a “winter warmer party” in our flat. We made mulled wine, mince pies and even pepernoten (Dutch biscuits) – it was fun! And it truly was a “warming” party – with the fire burning and so many people in the room it got to 25 degrees!

Today is the last day that the sun comes above the horizon, so no more daylight from now on… There’s still twilight though, and endless sunsets 🙂

Snow

Snow

Some people asked me for photos of the snow in Tromsø – here they are! The first photo is taken from our balcony and shows the last bit of daylight – at 13:30!! Only a few more days until the sun will not come above the horizon, and it will stay like that for 2 months.