Happy New Year!

It's time to back up our Zarges-boxes and go back to the cabin. We'll spend our New Year there, little bit out of the town and fireworks. So, Happy New Year for all of you!

Northern lights as Christmas decoration

Christmas was peaceful in Svalbard. We were lucky with weather and in the Christmas day we got a spectacular polar light show. It's not that often with pink and violet beside green colour, so it was really amazing look those colourful lights dancing all over the sky.

We dog owners skied to the cabin with our dogs and other people used scooters. They also took all of our totally full packed Zarges-boxes and other stuff with them. Huskies got a nice snow hole to sleep under the cabin and we others had it cosy inside the warm cabin.

In one day I needed to go to town to work for some hours. For that I just borrowed a scooter and drove to the town and later back. In one afternoon we got visitors from the town by scooters. They had also a dog with them, but she sat at a scooter with people. That's really practical :)

We had everything in the cabin without water and electricity: A real Christmas. Far away from busy world, out of commercialism. That is what Christmas is for me :)

Merry Christmas!

Christmas at a cabin

We will spend our Christmas at a cabin with some of our friends and dogs. We try to take some parts of Christmas traditions from all the countries which are somehow represented. There will be some traditions from Norway, Danmark, Sweden, Finland and Germany. In our Christmas dinner there will be some typical Christmas food from all of those countries. We are not yet sure will it be amount of meat or sugar which will kill us... Otherwise we just waiting for quiet and nice Christmas outside of the "busy" town.

Eclipse of the moon

Our visitor was really waiting forward to come to Svalbard and sleep loo-oong on her holiday. Good plan... but of course the astronomical happening of the year needed to be early in the morning. We had a total lunar eclipse and as it was at a shortest day (or, however, we don't have any day anyhow) of the year, you just couldn't sleep it over. And it was worth of it to follow it :)

We spend about two hours outside following the moon. It was around -18 Celsius and strong breeze. I had my Sorel Glacier and puffy down jacket on, but I was kind of totally frozen when we came inside - we were not moving much but mostly just standing in one place. Sorel Glacier is advertising that they are are comfortable to use up to -70 Celcius, but I would not be even dreaming to use them on those temperatures (we start on that fact, that I'm not dreaming about being outside on that temperature). I lost feeling on my toes just on that couple of hours time.

Christmas preparations

I'm back in Longyearbyen. It was nice to see twilight in Tromsø - now I'm ready to continue in totally dark again. Or, actually almost... it's soon full moon, so that will be giving magical light again.

We're having a visitor at the house over Christmas. We're preparing for a real Christmas with making decorations, baking and just having good time. Christmas with little excitement is allowed even for grown ups :)

Tromsø - the port to Arctic

Now I'm in a town visit in Tromsø, a town in Northern Norway. It is just a week to Christmas and all the town is having a Christmas-feeling over it. It's actually pretty nice to have a short trip to a "real town", have look around and do some shopping. And after a week it's again nice to fly home out of that all haste in the town and go home in our own little world. The sun isn't rising in Tromsø either, but in midday there is some hours twilight. For me it looks like a real daylight :)

Polaria

One of the nicest place to visit in Tromsø is Polaria.  There is a nice exhibition about Arctic, including Arctic Aquarium with bearded seals. Also the film "Svalbard - Arctic Wilderness" is worth to see. In the film you're following little auks and with them you're flying over the imaging landscapes over Svalbard. When I'm seeing that film I just need to think how lucky I'm that I can be living there.