SNOW - at last!!

We didn't have any snow in Tromsø for a long time, I think they had more snow in the Netherlands and the UK than we did here... which is quite frustrating as everything was just very icy and we couldn't go skiing. It's also a lot darker when there is no snow. But last weekend we finally got snow, and not just a little bit... 50 cm!! :) This is what the view from our window looked like after all that...

And that's actually the upstairs window ;) Hehe... there is a small roof underneath where the snow piles up. It weighs down on our front door, which is now hard to open. We'll have to remove this snow at some point I think, if only to get some light in again!

On Sunday we went skiing on Kvaløya with Sevim and Njål. The snow was so deep and powdery that we sank in up to our knees at times. It was good fun though, and great to be out skiing again. Of course there were lots of people with the same idea, it was really crowded! Here's a picture of us during our break. We learnt how to make a bench out of ski's :) While we were eating lunch, the skies cleared up a bit - the second photo shows how it changed from foggy to almost clear...

The next day was very sunny, and I stopped at Telegrafbukta on my way to work to take a few pictures. The fresh snow looked so beautiful in the sun. There is an open air museum here with pretty old buildings. "in cod we trust" is a (really nice) exhibition in this museum. The small red house is a cafe when the museum is opened.

My mum arrived in Tromsø today and she got lucky on her first night here - we got to see the aurora! It wasn't very active or very bright, but it was impressive nonetheless, reflecting in the water as well. My mum wanted a picture to make everyone at home jealous, so I took one of her with the aurora in the background :)

All for now, more photos soon!

Ice & Aurora

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 :D

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 :)

Fun in the Dark :)

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 :)

Mørketid

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!

More Aurora

We were hoping to go out to take more photos of the northern lights later this week, but just before 23:00 tonight we got a call from Sevim: active aurora! We looked out of the window and we saw a very bright display, even in the south. We quickly decided to drive somewhere, hoping the aurora wouldn't disappear in the mean time ;)

We drove towards Store Blåmannen, a large mountain which I call the Matterhorn of Tromsø ;) (it looks a bit similar). We found a place to take photos, but of course the lights were most active while I was still setting up my tripod and camera, there was hardly anything left by the time I was ready ;) It was still very pretty though. The moon was nearly full and very bright.

After a while we started to get very cold (it was quite windy which made it feel cold) and the activity of the northern lights didn't seem to increase, so we decided to go home. While we walked back to the car, suddenly the sky was filled with green beams, it was beautiful!! Of course it was decreasing again by the time I got my tripod and camera set up once more, but I still got some nice photos of the more active display:

Now it's 2 in the morning, and I should really get some sleep! So this is all for now. I still hope we can go another time later in the week, if the weather stays good!

Northern Lights from Kvaløyvågen

Last night the northern light forecast was really good, AND it was a perfectly clear night! So we decided to drive to Kvaløyvågen, a small village north of Tromsø from where we thought we'd have good views to the north without any city lights. It takes about 45 minutes to drive there, and we already saw the northern lights while driving. We drove to the end of the road, and continued on snowshoes. There were no lights there, but the moon was shining brightly - luckily to the south though! When we first got there, the northern lights were out, but very subtle.  Below you can see the moonlit landscape... it was beautiful!

After a while, the aurora became more active and much brighter. It was so beautiful! The views over the fjord were amazing, with the northern lights reflecting in the water. The circle in the second photo started out really big and quickly became smaller and smaller - a fantastic sight!

 

We finally made it back home at half past 1 in the morning... very tired! More active northern lights are expected next week, so I hope we get another chance to go out and take photos!

First aurora of the season

Well, for me at least! Though last week we did see some, but it was very faint and not worth taking a photo. Tonight for a short time they were quite active and I managed to get a few pictures from our balcony. Thanks to Sevim who warned me!

Aurora

No matter how many times I have seen them, they keep amazing me! I just wanted to share these two photos, the first one was taken last weekend when we went aurora hunting with Paul's parents (we needed LOTS of patience but we did get rewarded in the end). The second one was taken just an hour ago from the balcony.

This is my last week here for a while, and the aurora forecast is predicting pretty active aurora's... now I just hope we'll have clear skies as well!

More photos soon!

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:

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!

First week (and a bit) in Tromsø

Hello!

Sorry for my lack of updates recently, December was extremely busy! We've been in Tromsø for more than a week now. We spent the first two nights in a hotel. These photos were taken on New Year's Eve. The sun doesn't come above the horizon but there are still some hours of twilight with very beautiful light:

At night we took the cable car up the mountain to watch the fireworks over Tromsø island. It was very busy, in fact we were very lucky to get into the last cable car up, everybody in the queue behind us was sent home! They also lit fireworks from the top, it was very pretty!

And as if all that wasn't enough, the northern lights were visible too! The photo on the right is a new year's card I've made out of a photo we took up there.

We moved into the new flat on the 1st of January, it's a really nice place! Paul started working on the 2nd, so I've been working from home as well. This is the view from the (covered) balcony in the morning:

Very amazing! Last weekend we had time to explore a bit, and we discovered a frozen lake on top of the island, not far from our flat. There were people skating and playing ice hockey. I haven't skated in so long!! I've immediately asked my parents to send my skates here, I can't wait to try them :) These are some photos we took at the lake:

At night the northern lights were visible again, and this time they were very active and really impressive! We decided to go back to the lake to take photos from there. Unfortunately they almost disappeared by the time we got there so we didn't get any photos of the very impressive part of the show. It was still beautiful though! And quite special to be out on a frozen lake in the dark with nobody else around...

On Sunday we saw clouds for the first time, and that really shows how the days are really one long sunrise/sunset here! The colors were just amazing:

This morning when we woke up it was snowing like crazy! And it kept on snowing all day, so in no time we had a LOT of snow, very exciting! I went for a walk to town and took some photos. It takes only about 15 minutes to get there, downhill on the way so it takes a bit longer to come back as the hill is quite steep! In the first photo you can see our flat, if you enlarge it I have put an arrow pointing at our balcony.

With and without flash - as you can see it was snowing heavily! I came back as a real snowman ;)

This is just around the corner from the flat, there is actually a skeleton in the window of the little hexagonal hut - it scared me the first time I walked past!

Ok, now you have an impression of our first week in Tromsø! I'm really enjoying it here. I'll be here for another two weeks, then I have to be in Norwich for a bit. More soon!