Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

One thing I love about Tromsø is how living here makes you appreciate lots of things you take for granted elsewhere. Like sunshine! When the sun comes back at the end of January it has been absent for two months. Those first rays of sunlight are pure magic, it feels so good to finally see the sun and I imagine I can already feel its warmth (SUMMER! Hmm not for a while, but we’re going in the right direction 😉 ).

Today is the official “soldagen” in Tromsø, the day where the sun reaches the steps to the cathedral in town (or something like that). My work is on top of the island, so we got to see the sun 2 days earlier 😉 but today Signe and I went for a walk to Prestvannet today to soak up all the sunshine we could find 😀

The sun seemed huge today! It still doesn’t reach very high, so it “rises” and “sets” several times behind the mountain peaks in the distance.

I also wanted to share this photo. The airport in Tromsø bought one of my pictures to decorate a wall in the airport, and it’s HUGE – about 9 meters wide and 3 m high. Last Friday I was invited for lunch at the airport, so I could see my photo – I was so impressed 😀

After a busy week at work, including voluntarily showing up on my free Saturday to help dealing with hurricane Nina (in southern Norway), I was happy to sleep in today. Luckily I did wake up in time to see the beautiful twilight in the middle of the day, and I decided to visit one of my favourite places near Tromsø: Håkøya. It was cold, -9C (which is cold for Tromsø!), and in combination with the wind it felt even colder. My camera struggled with the cold, which is kind of strange as it didn’t have any problems during -25 / -30 in Finland. Luckily I managed to take some photos even when none of the buttons were working 😀

On my way home, I made one more stop, to take a photo of the lone cabin at Langnes.

Not long until the sun comes back, oh how I am looking forward to those first rays of sunlight!

The weather was calm and cold before Christmas. Then we were hit by several polar lows, which made my shifts at work very hectic and tiring, and we got LOTS of snow.

Either of this weather types would have been nice enough for a visitor, but Célia was really unlucky for the 5 days she was here: the temperature changed to +5 and we got lots of rain, which first gave streets full of slush before they turned into ice rinks. On the first evening she was here it was still mostly snow though, and we went to the beach where we took some moody photos…

The yellow light was caused by the clouds reflecting the city lights, it was quite spooky!

We had planned to take the cable car up on New Year’s Eve and watch the fireworks from there. The heavy rain that was forecasted spoiled our plans, but luckily we were invited to a nice party at Nick and Penny’s 🙂

It was raining so much the sparkles hardly wanted to burn, but we still had a nice view of the fireworks from the balcony. Going home, we all changed into more sensible footwear – partying Tromsø-style 😉

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HAPPY 2015!!!

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