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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!
Sunny days

Sunny days

After all the snowstorms, this week was mostly sunny! The views from the flat are so amazing, often distracting me from my work… We had some big icicles too, though they have all melted away now. It’s getting much lighter now, and sometimes there are very cool lenticular clouds forming over the mountains. The last photo shows the last sunlight on the mountain…

Tromso view Tromso view

Tromso view Tromso view

Something interesting I discovered on my way to town… a snow zen garden 🙂 I have no idea what’s underneath it and what causes this pattern, but it’s pretty cool!!

Tromso snow zen

Last night we went to a birthday party on Kvaløya, the next island. We decided to take the bus instead of biking, hmm… Due to a series of misunderstandings and mistakes, we got a whole tour of the island and it took us 2 hours to get there!! The birthday party was actually a BBQ!! It was at a really cute wooden house near the water and they made a big campfire and BBQ. Lots of fun! The aurora was out too, with a very impressive display. Due to previous experiences in Alaska, I was not too surprised to have an outdoor party in the snow, but it’s always a really nice experience. If you stay close to the fire that is 😉 On our way home in the bus people around us were complaining they could smell fire… ooooops….

camp fire camp fire

Today I bought my first serious mountaineering gear: crampons! We decided to walk up the hill to the cable car station which was really nice, lots of great views, thigh deep snow in places (where snowshoes would have been a better choice!), a very windy top with an amazing sunset, the sky turning pink everywhere. On the way back we took the quick/steep way down right underneath the cable car, so we could just sit down and slide… easy 🙂 It was getting dark and it was cool to see all the lights of Tromsø from there. A very nice day! We took lots of photos, here’s a selection:

out in the snow out in the snow

out in the snow out in the snow

out in the snow out in the snow

out in the snow out in the snow

out in the snow out in the snow

out in the snow out in the snow

out in the snow out in the snow

out in the snow

That’s all! Tomorrow are the reindeer races in the city centre, I’m looking forward to that! I’ll try to post some photos of that soon!

Skiing

Skiing

Yesterday we went skiing for a couple of hours, on the ski tracks on Tromso island. It’s very beautiful, you forget that you are in a city (not that Tromso is such a metropolis 😉 ). Everybody lives around the edges of the island and the middle is basically a big skiing area in winter.

It was a fun day! Hard work but it was great to be outside like that. The most difficult part is downhill cause it’s very difficult to brake on those kind of skies. We fell a lot! We went with two guys from Paul’s work and I was the slowest one – I would sometimes find myself at the top of a downhill, with three guys standing at the bottom looking at me and waiting for me to fall (as they all did…) – nasty guys 😉 Luckily I managed to stay upright better than they did, hehe.

There were lots of people enjoying the “good” (as in “no snow storm”) weather. It was fun to see people skiing with dogs! I had never seen this before, but they attach a rope to their middle and the other end around their dog, and use them to tow them uphill. All kinds of dogs too, we saw poodles and even little puppy’s! We also watched a competition at the ski jump, very impressive!! Paul has a better zoom on his camera so he managed to get some nice pictures of the jumpers. Here are some photos…

Skiing Skiing Skiing Skiing

Skiing Skiing

Skiing Skiing

At night we went to the concert and reception organized by the Dutch embassy. We figured it would be quite smart, so I was wearing a dress and high heels, not very practical in this town! We had to get a taxi to town, it takes a whole 5 minutes… 😉

The concert was really nice, it was the soloists of the New Dutch Academy playing “early music”, meaning classical from the 18th century, played on instruments that are not very common anymore – a lute, a flute, an early (and very small) version of the cello. Simon Murphy (the director) explained a lot about the music and he was really funny – it made the concert a lot more accesible I think. Very nice!

The reception afterwards was good too, I was impressed how many Dutch people live in (and around) Tromso! Some for over 30 years… I even met a woman who comes from a village less than 4 km from where I grew up! Unfortunately there were no bitterballen (even though everybody seemed to be hoping for them!) but they did serve jenever.

Today we didn’t do much, my muscles are hurting too much from yesterday!! We did ski a little bit around the lake. It’s been snowing again today. I’m looking forward to next weekend – there will be reindeer races in the city center! I’ll try to get some good photos of course 🙂

Tromsø , Norwich… & northern lights

Tromsø , Norwich… & northern lights

Hello!!

Time for an update!! It’s taken me forever, I know. I’ve been busy, have been back to Norwich for a while. It’s a bit weird to go straight from winter to spring…

Tromsdalen Norwich

It was nice to be back at UEA for a bit and see everybody there. Unfortunately I had a nasty cold and spend half my time in bed, but I still managed to see everybody and really enjoyed it. I didn’t take many photos so thanks to Karla for those nice ones 🙂

Norwich Norwich

I did take a photo on a very misty morning… this is my favourite tree on campus 🙂

UEA Norwich

I came back to Tromsø in the middle of a snow storm, rough landing! It has been snowing a lot for a couple of days. It’s amazing how much snow there is… there’s a car I can see from the flat that hasn’t been moved for a while and it’s completely buried now! Big icicles are growing on our balcony, we took one inside…

Tromsø

We bought spike tires for our bikes a few weeks ago. They are incredible! I was very sceptical on how well they would work, but it’s just like cycling on a normal road with no ice… The most dangerous thing is getting off your bike when you have forgotten how icy the road is! But I find cycling here very exhausting, too many hills!! 😉

Tromsø Tromsø

The northern lights are pretty active tonight, I took these photos from our balcony! It’s great to be able to take photos like that, though I’d like to go somewhere darker at some point. It’s a pity photos can never truly show what the northern lights are like… it was moving a lot, with beams shooting across the sky and sometimes showing pink and red… very impressive!

Tromsø Tromsø

Tromsø Tromsø

We’re going skiing tomorrow! We rented skies for the whole weekend, should be fun 🙂 My only cross country skiing experience was 4 years ago for an hour… it was exhausting! I’m more into downhill skiing… so we’ll see how this goes. I was glad to see that they come with very comfortable shoes!

Also we’re going to a concert and reception organized by the Dutch ambassador… I’m curious to meet all the Dutch who live here, apparently there are many! (I’m hoping for bitterballen at the reception hehe)

Hopefully I can upload some photos of the weekend soon!