Green skies!

In a way, I don't mind this at all, the crazy weeks when work smothers more or less everything else, punctuated by weekends that are crazier still, but for all the right reasons. And speaking of crazy weekends, the last one surely has to make it to my personal all time great list.

The plan had been on for many months, I just didn't know if I'd be able to make it till a week before, thanks to the aforementioned work insanity. However, it was a fairly large group of us who landed in Tromsø airport a couple of hours before midnight on Friday.

A few of us, carefully scanning the skies as the plane circled in to land, managed to see a little preview of the show we were most anticipating, the Aurora Borealis! The lights shimmered and morphed from one shape to another as we excitedly regretted the fact that there was no way to easily capture this from a flying plane! We worried that we might have missed the bus here and that was as good as it was going to get. After all, we'd all heard stories of people who'd made several trips to the cold dark north, only to come away empty handed.

We needn't have worried :). As soon as we'd thrown off the travel bags, had a quick walk around town and filled up at one of the few local restaurants that stayed open past midnight, we headed for the lake on the hill in the middle of the island of Tromsøya. Ringed by tall trees and frozen solid, with views of the higher mountains all around, it is one of the most easily accessible yet picturesque places to view the atmospheric magic from in Tromsø.

Of course, we only found out the details later. At the time, we just showed up and marvelled at the expanse of snowed over ice while things started happening above us! We'd seen a few strands of ethereal green appear in the sky on the walk up to the lake, but it was the hour spent on the frozen ice that will remain etched in my memory as one of the most spectacular displays of natural beauty I have ever seen!

Auroras were constantly appearing and then disappearing in the sky, fantastic shapes, one form morphing into another, curtains shimmering, waterfalls of light, mesmerising all of us. Of course, after an hour we were all so cold that when the lights in the sky seemed to peter out, we weren't too unhappy to head back to the warmth of indoors.

Our visit had been planned to coincide with the annual Sami week that is held in Tromsø to showcase the traditional lifestyle of the Sami people who are indigenous to the area. So we spent part of the next couple of days exploring that. My favourite was the reindeer ski racing!

We also visited the Arctic Cathedral and the city library. And spent several hours braving the cold to walk along the waterfront and in the town centre. The weather was quite nice for the most part, especially sunny and clear on Saturday which brought us some beautiful views of the fjords and mountains surrounding Tromsø.

The other highlight of the trip was the night dog-sleighing trip! It was a relatively last minute thing as far as plans go, but it turned out to be quite the adventure! We got picked up in town and driven north onto one of the outer islands shrouded in snow and darkness with the occasional light from a house peeking through the trees. We arrived at the dog farm which housed over a hundred dogs, bred for speed over ice and snow!

After a brief introduction to the art of handling a dog-sleigh, we headed off into the night in pairs. Yes, they actually let us run the sleighs by ourselves! And on the terrain we experienced, it was a full time job to keep the dogs from running away with it :). As we sped along the snowy countryside with views of the lights of Tromsø in the distance, I was somewhat thankful that the skies were clouded over. Had there been any visible auroras, we would either have not noticed them, or having noticed them, would have lost control of the sleighs :). 

As it is, the hour and a half or more on the trip disappeared in a flash and we were soon cocooned in a warm tent with hot coffee and chocolate cake being entertained by the youngest puppies on the farm! A lot of people suddenly wanted dogs :).

Well, since then there has been a nice day off celebrating a friend's birthday and three days spent on a boat and/or travelling. But more on that later, hopefully once I get back home very very late tonight.

Feeling: happy
Listening to: Bastille - Of the night

Review review

See, here's why I like my blog! Barely anyone reads it, especially these days, and therefore the judgemental shakes of the head are likely to be at a minimum :D. Yes fb, eat your heart out on your bloody tenth birthday. 

(That has people flooding walls everywhere with unfortunate reminders of how much it has taken over social lives. And when it happens, we will wonder how the world got taken over by random bits of code floating around in the ether.)

Anyway, here I can rave about things like this and declare that first order of business when I get home today will be to watch Stardust for the nth time. It is totally awesome when reviews agree with one's own opinions :).

Feeling: listless
Listening to: The Script - Six degrees of separation

Perfect snowflakes on Sundays

Wow! Okay, I've been way too busy! It's been a blur of weeks buried under too much work and weekends spent escaping from it as far away as I could! Mostly fairly successfully, I must say.

So I managed to follow up that awesome first weekend of snowboarding at Kvitfjell with an evening in Oslo, an attempted evening at the local slope here (which doesn't count so much as snowboarding as grinding circumspectly down an expanse of icy marbles), a full weekend at Trysil, and finally last Sunday at Kongsberg!

Ha! Sounds awesome when I say it like that, doesn't it?! Well, it was! :) I had not been back at Tryvann since early in the winter of 2010, and Trysil not since spring of that same year! I have indeed gotten somewhat better on a board, even if I say so myself :).

We never did get the same kind of spectacular bright sunshine as that Sunday at Kvitfjell, but there was more snow! Better powder of course comes with the price of colder temperatures, and boy was it cold at Trysil! This time however, I wasn't nearly as frightened of the t- and button lifts :). By Sunday afternoon we were practically at home at the complex maze of slopes and lifts that is Trysil skisenter!!

The weeks really do seem to disappear in a mist of frustration, meetings, drama and the occasional bright sunny view of the outside world that seems to be otherwise wreathed in a perpetual grey. It's gotten somewhat suddenly warmer since this last weekend. Which is making the hard earned snow disappear awfully fast :(.

I find myself crawling out of part hibernation. As someone pointed out, it seems related to the growing hours of daylight. Well, at this rate, I am quite looking forward to spring. But not just yet. Another weekend or two on the snowboard would do nicely!

Currently: hoping for more snow
Listening to: Lily Allen - Somewhere only we know

Whiteout!

I have to say this new year got a lot more of a hectic start that I'd have liked :). But then again, a fair bit of it was rather ridiculously fun! The new year's party for starters, with the only slightly clouded view of the fireworks and our own sparklers, it was quite the way to get things going.

And then, eventually, about a month too late, it started snowing in earnest! The temperature dropped over ten degrees practically overnight, and it did so just as we'd set off for a weekend at the Kvitfjell skisenter :D.

The timing couldn't possibly have been more perfect! We got there late Friday night after hours and hours in traffic, but we were greeted by the cosy if slightly overfilled cabin with ten of us in there, and the smell of dinner! Others had done the smart thing and been on the way before the Friday evening traffic hit the road :).

Saturday was on the one hand, brilliant, with fresh snowfall all day, but on the other hand, the mist and snow dropped visibility to almost nothing every now and then. That did mean I fell quite a few times, but at least there was fresh snow to cushion the blows :).

Sunday on the other hand, was out of a fairytale! The clouds disappeared to reveal a brilliant sunny day and the gorgeous slopes, just waiting to be explored! Of course that also meant the temperature was a bone chilling -16 degrees! We countered by stopping every couple of runs to thaw and enjoy the view. It was one of the best days of snowboarding ever. Not least because my own snowboard and boots I'd bought, way back in May, worked better than I could ever have dreamed!

For a change I managed to avoid the pitfall of that one last run, avoiding too many bruises :). It was a long drive back, but all in all a great way to kick off the snowboarding for this season!

Currently: waiting for the next opportunity
Listening to: Rudimental - Waiting all night (ft. Ella Eyre)

A change of pace

Right, here we are again. Only, that's not strictly accurate this time around. :) It has been a year like no other. But then again, changing your life over a decision made overnight staring at the silhouette of the Table Mountain couldn't really be expected to have gone any other way.

For one thing, I couldn't have possibly asked for a better adiós to the boat life than that phenomenal and spectacular two week adventure in South Africa! And since then it's been a different sort of adventure.

This must have been the longest summer here for years :). I am so glad I can look back and not think of a single way I could have made any more of it than I did!! In between the cycling hiking and the few trips here and there, not to mention the occasional night out on town, it was a blast!

Then by autumn I found myself more or less settled here, not feeling quite as weird having my own place. I'm glad I managed to get the car when I did, although I still feel I need to put more miles on it. I guess that'll come.

I haven't travelled nearly as much as I used to. No more accidental trips to places I wouldn't get within a thousand miles of, were it not for the matter of having to get on a boat :). Which can be good or bad thing, of course.

I have to say, things sort of slowed down on the fun and awesome front and speeded up on the crazy busy front towards the end here, but the vacations helped with that no end. I guess there are still a lot of things to get used to. It seems hardly believable that I have been in this country for nine months already!

This time last year I'd been hoping for something new, something I didn't even know I wanted. It's really amazing, the ways in which that has come to pass! In the end, I'd say I'm really looking forward to the first new year's sparklers and fireworks in years.

But more than that, I'm looking forward to the new year, with all the surprises, all the hopes and dreams, some that might come to be, others that will fade out of memory, but each one hopefully making up another truly amazing year :). And some snow.

Felling: festive!
Listening to: Travie McCoy - Rough water (ft. Jason Mraz)