A little winter video

So, a long dark winter is almost over, and everyone in town are waiting for the sun these days... The sun came over the horizon on feb. 18th, but doesn't hit town until march 8th, that meaning that if you leave town, climb a mountain or go on a snowmobile trip, you might get to see it sooner.
Although there is no sun, we have hours of light during the day now... It's so beautiful. (Imagine a 3 week long sunrise!!)
Here's a little video we've made, with pictures from this winter, both dark and light - time.
We've had 2 longish trips already, first to Isfjord Radio (100km south west of town), a luxury hotel in the middle of nowhere. Then to Mohnbukta (100 km north east of town) A more primitive cabin/shed in the middle of nowhere.
We haven't seen any polar bears yet, but we saw a lot of tracks in Mohnbukta.
I also went on a 3 day trip with my friend Victor, first night in a cabin, then second night at Isfjord Radio. Great trip with lots of good food, 15 bottles of wine and great drinks.
i had to post the video on Youtube, so press the link below.
-Oskar-

WINTER VIDEO 12-13.

Our Mainland Vacation

So I know it's been forever since we posted anything but let us just fill you in :)

We had such a great Christmas vacation. It was the first time in 5 months that we were able to leave our small city and see people we didn't recognize, so that was a plus! Mostly the best thing about the trip down was that we were able to spend lots of time with family and friends. And of course see some sunshine.

We went straight to Lier after arriving in Norway to meet little Mia. She was only a couple weeks old when we first met her and so super cute. As always Oliver had the warmest welcome for us with lots of running and screaming and scaring of each other. It's a great bedtime routine we tried to instill while we were down :) I'm sure his parents appreciated that.

A few days after we arrived my sister Steph and her family came to join us in Norway for Christmas. It was so great to get to see them again and play with Jack! Who has a mean slap shot I must add. We all stayed in Oslo at Oskar's sister's place, and it was really fun to be a tourist for a few days. Julie was unfortunately a little sick while we were there so she and Jack only got a couple days of playing together in. But Jack was really into all of her toys including the play kitchen. Although he kept trying to fix the sink plumbing instead of cook some food. :) He didn't like the talking James Brown or George W Bush, but can you really blame him?

Christmas day was spent first opening presents and eating chocolates in Oslo and then later opening presents and eating chocolates in Lier! We had an enormous dinner with about eight types of meat so I think Steph and Kurt were a little surprised that I'm still vegan in Norway. It was so fantastic to have them come to Norway for Christmas and to get to see them before they were soon heading back to North America (although we didn't know it at the time).

After Christmas Oskar and I spent a couple days in Oslo with our friend Henning. It was so much fun to walk around a big city and have the option of so many coffee shops and so many stores; I could have just window shopped all day. Then we all went back to Lier for New Year's Eve where we drank champagne and had fireworks. Ollie wasn't the biggest fan of fireworks but he came around a little bit towards the end; they can be a little scary if you've never seen them before. Come midnight we stood out on the balcony and watched all of town light fireworks. I have never seen so many in my entire life before! For kilometers you could see them going off everywhere and it was incredibly loud. All around us there was banging and it sounded strangely like a war zone. Of course Oliver wakes up to the thundering of fireworks, it was insane. I had never seen anything like it. Oskar and Henning assured me that this was nothing compared to when fireworks were legal (what??) when they were growing up! It was pretty awesome.

Then came Spain! Yeah.

Oskar and I spent most of the days we were in Spain climbing. It was so much fun to be outside all the time and wear only a t- shirt. It wasn't really that hot if you were walking around in town but when you're sheltered from the wind and standing against a rock face it gets pretty warm. I even got new freckles! We didn't try many new climbs but we did go over a lot from last year and this time I led them instead of Oskar. I can't say enough how amazing it was to be outside and climb in the sunshine like that. It was exactly what I wanted! It was great too to have Oskar's brother, Jan, come join us climbing for a day, hopefully we can do more of that again.

My friend Rebecca from Canada was traveling in Europe for a couple weeks just visiting friends and happened to be in Spain at the same time I was, so we of course planned a visit. It was really great to have a friend come visit and it's always nice to have a little bit of Canada around!

We had a lot of great dinners cooked in the outdoor kitchen, we went to the zoo ( it's a really awesome zoo) and we went on some shopping trips. When I told Erin that Longyearbyen has 2 clothing stores aside from the sports stores, she couldn't believe it. Especially when I mentioned that one of them is a Gant store. It was then understood why we wait to buy socks and underpants and jeans until we come to the mainland. We don't really have the greatest variety and it's all a little pricey :)

We landed in Norway late at night and after a mini Christmas of all the gifts sent from Canada (Merci!) and a quick sleep, Øyvind drove us to the airport. Flying in to Longyearbyen was very beautiful; The blue light had just come back to Longyearbyen the day we were landing so it was much brighter than I had expected. As the plane was starting to descend we were able to see the sun rays just beyond the horizon. It's coming so soon!

 Shovelling snow in Lier.

 Kjerringvik and the hot tub in Kjerringvik :)

 Christmas eve afternoon we tried maybe four places to sit and have a coffee.

Oskar on some crazy climb.

Ollie's lunch!

We went to Valencia one day. We accidentally walked around the entire old town thinking we were going right through it! We went to a market and got some delicious food and then sat outside and watched people. My favourite thing to do!

This is the kids park in Albir, it's so much fun! They even have exercise equipment for adults so that you can work out and watch your kids play.

 Harvesting from the garden! We brought 23kg back to Norway with us. Definitely worth it.

While we were at the zoo we rented some mobility scooters (they are for rent everywhere in Albir) just for fun. But I think the boys were a little embarrassed when they first started driving them.

Thank you everyone for a great Christmas vacation. We're looking forward to seeing everyone again soon!

Much love.

Mørketid

It's now the dark season! It's not entirely blackness yet but it isn't light either.

A few weeks ago we had a blues festival in Longyearbyen. It's called The Dark Season Blues and it's been going on for 10 years this year. There were a lot of really great bands from all over including, Norway, the States and Ireland. I was working the whole weekend at the hotel (very early shifts) so I got to meet all the musicians while they were hungover. I served them coffee and coca cola! It was pretty funny, but everyone was really friendly. I did get to go to two concerts that weekend. One of them was at Huset when Oskar was working and the other was a free jam concert with all the musicians at the hotel I work at.

Since that festival it's been pretty quiet up here. Not many tourists and not too much work to do. There is a lot of snow but not enough to start skiing and snowmobiling because we might hit rocks, so we haven't been on any trips yet this season. We did actually go for a walk up Platåfjellet (behind the church) a few weeks ago when there was still quite a bit of light. The walk up wasn't too windy but by the time we got to the top it was so windy, we could hardly walk against the wind. I got really cold really fast so we didn't stay up there for too long, which was probably for the best because the walk down was steep and slippery so it was better to make it with more light than just that from our head lamp!

Here are some photos from around town they were just taken with my phone so they're not the best of quality. Just sharing :)

Waiting for the sun, it will return to these stairs March 8th...

 Some end of September light on Hjortfjellet.

 The hotel restaurant has such a great view.

 Usually you can see those giant mountains at the end of the road. Not this day.

 Blues festivities at Huset.

 One of the great things about the dark season is the moon.

 This was around noon a couple weeks ago. The blue light is just so awesome up here.

 The view from Platåfjellet.

The other night Oskar and I drove out into Adventdalen (the big valley outside of Longyearbyen) with some friends to look at the northern lights because there were so many of them. Lots of people had the same idea and were driving past us standing on the side of the road staring up at the sky. I got to see a little red in the northern lights; It was awesome! There hasn't been too many northern lights so far that I've seen but once in awhile when I get home from work and stand in the darkness behind our house I get a little show so that's nice.

Vi gleder oss masse til å besøke fastlandet og alle våre nevøer og nieser! Gjør deg klar Sola, vi kommer!

Thuesday october 16th. - A day to remember...

So, we blog about special trips, days or other special events in our lives. So it's only fair that i get to mark my words, on the World Wide Web, of the day I drank, 2 of them for the first and probably last time of my life:

Krug Grande Cuvée

Dom Pérignon - 2003 Vintage.

Ruinart Blanc de Blancs

Veuve Clicquot - Brut Yellow Label

Oliver's week...

So, from sunday to monday Oliver, Jan and mom came up for a visit.

We miss all our nephews and nieces so much, so it was very nice to have a visit from one of them last week. And sure... Jan and moms visit was ok too... 

The weather was ok while they were here, temperatures from around -10 to +1'C.

It's weird showing a "mainland- kid" our daily life, seeing that he has no reference as to what we are talking about.

For example; the day Oliver arrived Jessica and i gave him a toy snowmobile to play with... 10 minutes later we had to go on YouTube to show him what a snowmobile is.

Oliver's week summary:

A reindeer is a sheep, that looks cold.

A real snowmobile becomes the coolest thing in the world. And a bit scary to sit on.

A polar bear becomes a huge stuffed teddybear that stands completely still at the museum and says WRAAH!

A seal, well, that's a tube like pillow.

Fossils are just rocks.

Arctic fox are uninteresting cat looking things...

A spotted, brown and white horse; well, thats a cow.

A treadmill is a toy.

On thursday evening mom looked after Oliver while Jan, Jessica and my self went for a fantastic 6 course dinner at Huset (a super nice restaurant, with an amazing wine and Champagne cellar)

We had a former Noma (best restaurant in the world) chef make our dinner, and they managed to make even amazing Vegan food for Jessica.

We were accompanied by a good friend and sommelier Victor who took us on Champagne tasting before dinner. He also helped us pick 4 bottles of wine to go with our food.

WOW! is the only summary worthy after an evening like that.

(and one hell of a hangover, for those weaker people that get hangovers...)

We went for a swim in the Longyearbyen public pool one day. Oliver loved it! As soon as we came in, he headed straight for the diving board and jumped off the 1-meter one. He was super upset when we had to tell him 'No', when he wanted to go for the 3 meter one.

Pyramiden og Barentsburg

I had the opportunity to go to Pyramiden with UNIS last week. We took the same boat that picked us up from our camping trip (Langøysund); it took 3 hours to get there and 3 to get back. So we had three hours walking around in Pyramiden. It was such a strange little Arctic ghost town, but I really enjoyed it. It was amazing to see all the buildings and just imagining people living there at that time. It is beautifully situated among some amazing mountains with a huge glacier across the fjord.

Pyramiden is the abandoned Russian settlement on Svalbard. It was bigger and much more beautiful than Barentsburg when it was still in operation. It was also a coal mining town but in 1998 everyone just up and moved. There are a lot of stories and thoeries as to why Pyramiden was abandoned the way that it was, people were told that they would be able to come back and get their belongings but they never were. So walking around you can see people's possessions in some rooms still, plates on tables and childrens' toys; you get a really strange feeling from seeing it all.  It has been many years of people coming to visit and going inside the buildings so it has changed quite a bit since it was first abandoned. Buildings have really worn down from the wind and snow, there is also serious spring flooding in Pyramiden every year. There is now some money going into trying to keep the town from falling apart, but not much.

Then this week I went to Barentsburg with UNIS on the same boat. This is a shorter distance but because there were some tourists on the ship with us we got to take the whole cruise. It made for a longer trip but I got to go back to where we were camping this August. We saw Esmarkbreen again and the beach where our tent was, then we sailed over to Barentsburg. After the short little guided tour by our english speaking guide (apparently he's one of five people in town who speak english) we took our own tour down to the very polluting, coal burning power plant. This really has no filtering of any kind on it; walking closer to the power plant I could feel my tongue getting itchy and the smell was awful. They are really starting to clean up Barentsburg by fixing many of the buildings (some with a new facade and some with a remake of the Soviet union style ornate buildings), but they have forbid UNIS to take any air or soil samples any more because when Mark did so a couple of years ago he found the air quality next to the power plant to be similar to that found in areas of Mumbai. They since have told the governor of Svalbard that they have installed filers on their smoke stacks.

Sorry about that little sad side track, but that was the reason we were in Barentsburg so I thought I would share.

Here are some photos of the two trips.

The town sign of Pyramiden and it's name sake mountain.

 Grass from Siberia that was brought here by the Russians while they were still living here. This grass was able to grow on Svalbard, so they were able to make a sort of Town square area.

 The bottle house. A building made of used glass bottles!

The world's Northern most Lenin statue as seen from the doors of the sports center.

Then the trip to Barentsburg. 

The fjord was so calm on Friday.

Esmarkbreen.

 Haha these are the garbage bins on the ship.

A little glacier ice fished from the water to put in our Scotch Whisky. Kristen, I thought you might like this; it's just like the Bailey's commercials!

 Some seals for scale :) There were about fours of them laying on the ice when we pulled up close to the glacier.

 There are large paintings of trees and forests and other encouraging things around Barentsburg that were put up in the Soviet times trying to make people happy while there.

 This is the school in Barentsburg. There used to be a whole in the wall here but when they fixed it they had it painted by a professional artist from St. Petersburg and the paintings are a mixture of Russian and Norwegian cultural images.