Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

Last Sunday we met up with a friend from Norwich, Nina. She’s a PhD student in the same project that I was in, and she was in town for the Arctic Frontiers conference. We picked up her and Svetlana (Nina’s friend from Russia) from their hotel in town, and we drove to Håkøya – the same place I took the sunset photos in the last post. We had a VERY cold spell in Tromsø last weekend. The lowest temperature measured was -15, for the first time since 1998! Combined with a strong wind, it was seriously freezing. We went for a short walk on the beach. Here’s a photo of Nina (on the left), Svetlana (middle) and me, and one of Nina and Svetlana.

It was beautiful there, with lots of big pieces of sea ice lying on the beach. We spent some time taking photos before running back to the warm car…

We drove back to town and stopped underneath the bridge between Tromsø island and the island of Kvaløya. Svetlana wanted to take some pictures of the bridge. I had never stopped there, but it was really impressive to stand underneath the bridge!

Our next stop was Prestvannet, the lake on top of Tromsø island. We’ve hardly had any snow this winter, which means that you can skate on the lake! There were quite a few people braving the cold wind. I was hoping to go skating too, but as we’re in the middle of moving my skates were somewhere in a box and I couldn’t find them.

After our visit to the lake we were really frozen and went for a cup of tea inside 🙂

I have finished my training at work now, and I’ve started with the parallel shifts. Very exciting! I’m now writing forecasts “for real” and I’m learning a lot. They don’t want me to do night shifts yet, but I have worked a few afternoon shifts (15:00-23:00) which aren’t too bad. On Tuesday night I drove home from work and noticed some northern lights in the sky. When I came home, they were really bright, I could clearly see them even from inside the house. I quickly went outside to get some photos. The first photo is taken from the building plot in front of our flat, they’re building a football field there. The second one is taken near our front door 🙂 We thought it would make a great “we’ve moved” card, but as we’ve been subrenting this flat before we started renting it ourselves, everybody already has our address 😀

The aurora was so good that we decided to drive to a beach near the north tip of the island. When we arrived there, it started to move like crazy, dancing across the sky. It was showing some pink as well, as you can see below – very impressive!

We stayed there for a while, enjoying the beautiful show. Luckily temperatures had climbed up that day, otherwise we would have never lasted that long! I played with the camera a bit, and asked Paul to stand very still…

We’ve been busy this past week with decorating our new flat. This is the first time for us to live in an unfurnished flat, so we needed lots of furniture and appliances. We finally have everything now and we can start to unpack all boxes. Tomorrow we’re going skiing though, we FINALLY had a lot of snow. And on Tuesday my mum is coming to Tromsø for a few days, so I’m sure there’ll be lots of photos to share next week 🙂

Last week, I went out one evening to meet some fellow Dutchies/Flemish in a café. When I stepped out of the house, the sky was filled with beautiful aurora! Quickly changing plans, we drove to Telegrafbukta hoping to get some pictures, but by the time we got there (only about 10 minutes later) it was all gone… Paul dropped me at the café and drove to the north tip of the island afterwards, hoping the lights would reappear. And they did! Here are some nice pictures he took…

On Saturday we went to town for some shopping. The Christmas lights are hanging now, and there’s a Christmas tree in the square. (They actually put it there by helicopter, I would love to watch that but keep missing it!) It also snowed a little – a perfect Christmas atmosphere! After shopping, we stopped at our favourite place: Aunegården. They serve the best cakes in Tromsø! (And guess what, my new job’s “julebord” (Christmas meal) will take place there 🙂 needless to say I signed up!)

On Sunday, I had some work to do so I stayed at home, despite the beautiful weather. Paul went up Tromsdalstinden! He started from Tromsdalen, even though the walk through Tromsdalen valley is quite a boring one. But the first cable car is at 11:00 and that wouldn’t give you enough daylight to get to the top. He walked up via Rødryggen. From there he took this panorama, which shows how beautiful the light is even when we have no direct sunlight:

In the first photo you can see Tromsdalstinden from Rødryggen. He took snowshoes, but didn’t use them as there was very little snow, and it was quite hard and compact. Crampons were needed to get over the icy patches. By the time he reached the top it was dark! There was however a very bright moon that night so it wasn’t a problem. He took a self portrait on the top, very pleased to finally have conquered “the beast” in winter. He was hoping to sign the turbok (logbook), but the cairn was so snowed under that it was impossible to reach it!

Safely back in Tromsø we enjoyed a well-deserved (for Paul anyway!) pizza in town 🙂

After a very rainy Saturday, we were craving some fresh air on Sunday, and we went for a walk with Sevim. The mørketid, or dark time, has now begun – the sun doesn’t come above the mountains anymore. By Friday, it won’t come above the horizon at all. In the weather forecast, a cloudless day is indicated by this symbol:

Anyway, we went for a walk along the coast. It was cloudy and windy, but quite warm. We found a lighthouse with a ladder leading up… without any DO NOT signs, we couldn’t resist climbing up! The photo on the right (below) is taken through the top bit and you can see the large lens on the left.

We enjoyed the views from up there for a while! In the photo on the right you can see Paul climbing down. It’s not a very large lighthouse, but it was a fun visit 🙂

Last week, when the weather was frosty and clear, we missed out on some great aurora shows. I was simply too tired after work to go out and look for the lights! Sunday night it cleared up, and Paul decided to drive to a dark place to go for a walk and see if he could get some pictures. The aurora wasn’t very active, but it was continuously visible low on the horizon, and he did come back with some nice photos:

Too bad I had to miss out… but that’s the disadvantage of having a job which is not as flexible with working hours. I really enjoyed my first week at work though, I’m learning a lot and I really like it. Anyway… it’s definitely bedtime for me now!