Peace, Love, and Lutefisk: Adventures i Norge

Ahhh. I'm back. After a randomly fun, up-and-down week (both emotionally and longitudinally), I have returned to Tromsø in more or less one piece. In the past week, I have been in the Tromsø airport 5 times, flown over 2600 miles, and have traveled by plane, train, car, bus, catepillar, and dog sled. Needless to say, random and fun.

After Alison's arrival and the stolen bag incident, we headed out on Sunday to ski jump show. No, I haven't taken up a new sport, but I had a performance there. I joined a choir about 3 months ago in Tromsø and our director is supposedly a famous Norwegian ski jumper from the 1960's. Because of his connections, we were the entertainment at a ski jump competition. The ski jump area was inland, which in Norway means cold because there isn't the ocean breeze to keep the temperatures bearable. So we arrived and waited, and waited, and waited. After a couple waffles, a hot dog, and maybe two hours around the fire that was warming the coffee, we finally got ready to sing. Little did I know all the dramatics that would take place. Our director jumped off the ski jump with his pink ski jump suit on while wearing a black tux coat on top. He jumped and then skied over to us and started our song. Ridiculous. To make things even more entertaining, we had to learn two songs just for the event. "Love, Love, Snow" and "Jump and Fly." The lyrics to "Jump and Fly" were especially hilarious: "Let's jump and fly and have more joy. Let's make love and have more peace." Little did I know that ski jumping was the key to peace. Man, that could have saved me almost two semesters of studying.

Well, after shivering and singing, we thawed ourselves out for the concert that evening. The concert ended up being like a high school talent show with a band playing 70's rock songs, a trio of women singing "Proud Mary," and then us. Singing the Hallelujah's Chorus. Not exactly a well planned Lenten line-up, but it was ridiculously entertaining. I think the best part of the whole day was the drive home. We had a two hour drive home and the sky was filled with Northern Lights, so Alison and I just sat looking out the window watching the lights dance us home.

Monday we decided to listen to the lights and went north. We took a two hour flight north of Tromsø to Longyearbyen, the northern most settlement in the world at 78 degrees North! It is on the island of Svalbard which is governed by Norway and is a tiny community of about 1800 people. The ocean currents keep Svalbard habitable (maybe) and it attracts arctic researchers, tourists, and interesting people who don't mind having to travel by snowmobile everywhere. There are no roads connecting Longyearbyen to any place else and you have to take a gun with you if you leave the city limits because of the risk of polar bear attacks. Typical. Also, all the pipes are above ground because the ground is too cold to bury electricity, water, and cable lines. Another thing that struck me immediately was the fact that many of the buildings are built on stilts so when it snows and drifts they can still get in and out of their homes and offices. Yikes!

Alison and I arrived to beautiful sunny weather and cold temperatures around -10 farenheit. We rolled in to the guesthouse we were staying at and at first I wanted to try to find a new place. Tiny military looking beds in a room the size of a dorm room, made me a little wary. But we stayed and were rewarded throughout the week with nice people and great food and ice cream with fresh berries served at their restaurant. How is it possible to have fresh berries in Svalbard? I don't know, but they tasted great! And how is it possible to get great meat and vegetables in Svalbard? Again, I'm amazed by transportation and distribution, and heck, refridgeration too. After we dropped off our stuff, we went to explore the city. Thirty minutes later after we had seen the grocery store, the bar, the restaurant, (notice emphasis on the singular) and walked up and down main street we decided to go back to the room and get out of the cold. We did a lot of that in Svalbard, sitting, relaxing, and watching season 2 of Gilmore Girls on our laptop. It seemed like in Svalbard we were either doing something really crazy, or nothing at all. Both of which were fun!

The second day in Svalbard we went dog sledding which was great! We were picked up by our Polish guide and the Japanese couple and two Norwegian ladies who were going on tour with us. We drove out of town (gun in hand) to the dog kennel where our sled dogs were laying in their own urine that only disappears when it is covered up by more snow. We were assigned our dogs and had to get them off of their leash and connected to our sled. Easier said then done. I had my mitten ripped up by the barking, excited dogs. Once we got them connected to our sleds though, it was awesome! Just the sound of the wind rushing past our faces as we drove the dogs in between tall, bright, white mountains. The dogs would awkwardly pee and poop while running, and we just got to sit and enjoy the ride or stand and drive the dogs while they carried us into the wilds of Svalbard. It was amazing how simple, monotonous, barren, and beautiful the landscape was. Everything was either white or blue and everything looked untouched by humans. Natural, wild, and quiet. Until...the dog fight! We stopped about halfway through our ride to switch drivers. While we were stopped a few of the dogs from two different teams got in a little fight, and before you knew it all the dogs were jumping in to fight. Our fearless Polish leader had to get in the middle and try to seperate the dogs, but it's hard to keep 12 dogs apart! One white dog came out bleeding and everything was tangled when the fight was finally over. But man, it was entertaining! We survived with our warm clothes and goggles and felt like we deserved a day of relaxation after our dog sled trip was over.

Our next adventure was ice caving. We rode in a catepillar-like vehicle for about 30 minutes that took us up the mountain to a glacier. There we climbed down a small tunnel and shimmied our way inside the glacier. It was amazing! What is a rushing river under ground in the summer turns into a beautiful, still, and surprising warm cave in the winter. We walked around exploring and looking at the ice version of stalagmites and stalagtites in awe of the extent of the caves. A little hot cider and cookies inside the glacier perfectly capped off the adventure.

So Svalbard. Exciting and boring. Barren and beautiful. International and isolated. It is a random place that I am glad I visited. Everyone wears four layers of clothes everywhere and has to take off their shoes before going into stores or museums. Everyone drives snowmobiles. They have a bar with one of the largest spirits selections in all of Norway and there is little or no tax in Svalbard to convince people to stay so people take advantage of the selection.
The Longyearbyen residents even have "summer cabins" located about a mile outside of town where they go to get away from the hustle and bussle of the "big city." It is hard to describe, but if you ever want to take the scenic route to Tromsø, you should come over the top and make a stop in Svalbard.

After returning to Tromsø, we felt like we were in the big city near the tropics! We went shopping at a retro store Friday morning and came back to the house to have a barbequeoutside with my housemates on our porch. It was so much fun! It was probably 15 degrees farenheit out and there was two feet of snow on our porch, but we still sat outside with sunglasses on, sunbathing our faces while the rest of us were covered in sweaters. A grilled burger never tasted so good.

The barbeque gave us the strength to continue onwards to Oslo. There we took buses and trains in an attempt to find the apartment of my friend Andre. We were going to stay at his place, but we couldn't get a hold of him on his phone. We knew we were in the right neighborhood, but after about 15 minutes we gave up calling and just sat down on the steps of an apartment building and watched another episode of Gilmore Girls. Leave it to Svalbard and getting lost in Oslo to get me addicted to Alison's favorite show. Andre finally called and we found his apartment.

The next morning we got up early and caught a ride to Hønefoss, one hour from Oslo. There I played in the Norwegian Indoor Ultimate Frisbee Championship! It was great fun. I was placed on the B team from Bergen which consisted of players from South Africa, Germany, Norway, and Colombia. Most of the players were new to the game, so after a few games of finding our rhythm, we ended up doing well finishing 5th out of 6 teams. It felt great to run around again, even though I'm still feeling sore! Alison was a great sport to sit in a gym for a day watching ultimate. I think at the very least she got some knitting done.

Then, Sunday...back to reality. Alison and I had to say goodbye and I had to come back to work on my exam which is due on Friday. As you can tell from the length of this blog, I'm doing well at distracting myself. It's been a great week though. From dogs to discs and ski jumping directors to Danish comedians (one of whom we met in a church in Svalbard!), I feel like I've experience all the extremes of Norway this week. It's crazy to think that I actually live here. A good crazy.