Aurora

Tonight we decided to go for a drive to find dark places to watch the northern lights from. It was clear but the aurora forecast was not very good, so we didn't actually expect to see any. What a surprise when we stepped out of the flat and saw an amazing show overhead! We knew it would probably die out while we were driving, but we went anyway. We drove to a very dark place, after chasing a family of moose (4 of them!) along the road for a few kilometers. Silly animals, they can go left or right but prefer to jog along right in front of the car...

Anyway, this is what we saw when we found a nice place to watch the lights... It was incredible! So many stars out there too! Click for bigger versions:

Skis!!

We finally bought ourselves some skis! After a long time deciding what kind of skis we wanted, we finally went for fjellskis with small skins (attached underneath the skis, for going uphill), Telemark bindings and leather Telemark boots. The skis are quite narrow (67mm) and have metal edges so in theory you can turn quite well when going downhill, but this needs some more practice/skills. We have never done Telemark skiing so we still have to learn the Telemark turn, it will make going downhill a lot easier. Though the snow here is often so thick that going downhill isn't scary at all - it slows you down and it doesn't hurt much when you fall.

The weather this weekend was beautiful, plus we recently got a car - time to explore!

On Saturday we went to Ramfjorden. This is a fjord that freezes over, even though the water is salty. It's quite impressive to see the sea ice edge, it's very straight! There were people on the ice, so we thought it would be save... But I guess you need skis (to distribute your weight) cause when Paul stepped on it without them, he went through the ice with both feet! So he was quite wet and we decided to go home first to get dry socks for him before going skiing. But I first took some pictures there of course ;) The last two are of some huge icicles we found hanging from one of the cabins at the fjord.

While at home, I took another photo of the view... just can't get enough of it! We're getting more and more sunlight now, it's really nice.

Then we finally got to try out our new skis on the tracks at Tromsdalen (in the valley on the other side of the bridge). It was beautiful there at sunset, with the mountain (Tromsdalstinden) turning very pink.

The great thing about our car: the skis easily fit in the back and you can sit in the van to change shoes etc:

On Sunday it was sunny again, and we headed for Movik, also on the mainland. The ski paths there are really nice! Not as busy as Tromsdalen and very beautiful... We first skied to a lake (Movikvatnet), and then further up. In the first photo you can see the lake, and the next photo is taken from a lot further up:

It was so beautiful up there, amazing views and nobody else around. We did meet another couple up there at some point, they were really friendly. Too bad we had to turn around to get back to the car before it was getting dark! There's lots of huts around so we're thinking about doing a multi day trip another time.

We took lots of photos from the top bit (almost 400m high). The last photo is taken back at the lake on our way back to the car. What a nice day!!

So that was a busy weekend! We're really tired now, but I can't wait to go for another trip :)

A Volkswagen!

After years and years of dreaming about it, I finally own a Volkswagen! I've always been crazy about them, first the Beetle and later also the Camper van...

I took photos of them all over the world (click for a large version):

And own many miniature ones...

And now... we own a 1997 Volkswagen Caddy... HAHA.

We actually almost bought a beetle but as they are not very reliable, and with all the snow and ice here, we thought it was a bit too risky... So we went for this bargain van, it's actually quite nice and it's possible to sleep in the back so it's *almost* a camper van :-)

Other great news: I am an aunt now! My brother Bart and his girlfriend Kaya just had a baby girl a few days ago, her name is Mare. I've put a link to their weblog on this page, they have just place some photos :) I'm looking forward to meet my (first ever!) niece... I'm going for a visit in a few weeks.

Have a good weekend!

Reindeer Racing

The reindeer races took place last week. Unfortunately it was a rainy day, the temperatures were above zero - it makes a horrible mess of the snow. Luckily there was enough snow in Tromsø's main street for the races to take place (I actually think they cheated and got snow from elsewhere!)

The races were really impressive, I had never seen anything like it! Very fast... Here are some photos I took. In the last one you can see that there was also a race for children!

Here's an experiment, see if I can show a video of the races!

The races are organized by Sami people, I love their colorful clothes!

By the end of the races we were all cold so we went for some soup/coffee inside a Sami tent, sitting on reindeer skins around the fire... very cosy! As you can see in the photo below those tents are made of wood and reindeer skinds, with a big hole in the top to let the smoke out.

It kept raining on Monday and Tuesday, and then finally temperatures dropped below zero again and we had fresh snow. A lot better than the mess you get when the snow melts and it rains on top of that! Unfortunately today that happened again... blegh. We've been trying to find a second hand car this week, no luck so far. Would be great to have one and explore the area around Tromsø a bit more!

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...

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!!

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....

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:

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

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...

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

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...

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 :)

I did take a photo on a very misty morning... this is my favourite tree on campus :)

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...

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!! ;)

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!

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!