Day 8 – The free day. Part 1

19.03.2015
The first morning in the new home. Juris quietly wakes me up and bit by bit we start to get ready for going to the seed vault. While we’re heating water and preparing breakfast the others are waking up one by one.

Also Maija who is hosting us, is up. We talk about many things, then I ask her whether she has seen a polar bear at all -? She replied affirmative and told that she had faced one in summer – some weeks after starting the studies here. They had gone to camp in groups outside the town as part of the studies and the polar bear had woken them up in the morning by starting the alarm system. But that didn’t scare the polar bear, and it continued to search for food. The had fired a flare gun which doesn’t hurt the bears, just to scare them off, but that hadn’t helped and it had continued with scavenging and eating. As a result they had fired 17 of the flare guns! Soon the helicopter appeared which they had called out and that finally scared of the polar bear who run away. Everyone got through unharmed but with a big shock and experience. It had been very serious but now it’s possible to tell with a smile on. She said that some people who have been living here for a long time haven’t seen any polar bear, some spot one occasionally, and others meet one soon after arriving here. To see a polar bear is a rare happening and to get attacked by one is even rared.

Me, Agnese and Juris are preparing for a long walk to the seed vault along the old road which is accessible to snowmobiles and pedestrians (armed as it’s outside the town). Anders will also come with us till some moment and then will leave for his own errands in the town. Also the others have their own plans. Some are walking in the town, some are resting – this is the free day, so everyone can do whatever they want.

We will visit the post and the supermarket before going to the seed vault as it has a free wifi. Using the internet Agnese does the things she wants to do in time and Juris is also using the opportunity. Meanwhile I browse the shops. I’m curious on what is on offer here for an active lifestyle. While exploring the shop I concluded that here is almost everything that would be needed to be in winter freeze and summer. Diverse equipment is available starting from cutlery to mountaineering. The clothes are offered in a good variety. There is also Hero Go pro camera and its accessories. If one doesn’t have special requests, one can come here without almost anything and come here to shop, but there is one “but” – the price. The price is as in Norway, but there is also a positive side to it – there are no taxes included in the price since there are no taxes here. If one has a lot of money, it is possible to go on shopping spree. It is more complicated with the alcoholic drinks as you can only buy a limited amount. If you have arrived by plane, you can present your ticket to buy some, but the locals are given a special card to mark how much you have bought.

Agnese finished to use the internet and I to browse the shops. We are going to the post and find out the prices for the post cards. Tomorrow they are issuing a special stamp in honour of the Solar eclipse. The stamp will cost 20NOK.

The northern-most sundial

The northern-most sundial

The four of us are going to the seed vault and pushing the acquired kicksled. We cross a bridge and go to see the sundial which is the northern-most and showing time the entire day when it’s the midnight sun here. The time of the sundial matches that of the mobile phone. We sign in the guest book, take many pictures of the sundial and check on how it is here with the shadow of the mountain and where we should observe the eclipse. We concluded that the place is good and it should be possible to see the eclipse between two mountains.

We are heading for the old road and see an old snow bulldozer as well as a cable trolly which has been put out for public to see. Soon we notice on a wall of a building something familiar from one of the previous eclipse trips – an Australian road sign with a kangaroo! It’s not so hot here, however, and there are no kangaroos either.

Cable trollies

Cable trollies

Then we stop at the old sorting place of the cable trollies which come from four directions and the old stanchions are still standing in their places. That’s the history of mining that is kept here as historical heritage, and the old houses are not allowed to be pulled down either. A part of the sections with cables and trolleys is preserved. There is also a GeoCache here. For some time we are looking for it by the description where it should be located, but soon after we find it a bit further away. Meanwhile Anders takes photos. He is not coming further and will go back to the town.
[… to be continued…]

Day 2 – The arrival day

Those 7 of us who came to Oslo last night spent it in the Gardemoen airport which is claimed to be one of the top 10 European airports for sleeping. There were several options ranging from the floor to nice-looking cushioned stools in one of the cafes. However, the cafe area appeared rather busy and it would take long time to wait till everyone has left. So we went for some shorter space along 3 seats in a row of chairs on the 2nd floor for 3 of us, and a quiet corner on floor for the other 4. I opted for the chairs and spent a very peaceful and not at all uncomfortable night,

On the other side of security control it turned out that Longyerbyen flights are on the international schedule rather than the domestic. I believe that might be because Svalbard is not part of Schengen zone while Norway itself is.
We met Anders at the gate. Some (unsuccessful) attempts to fix the map on the homepage and I had to leave the internet behind. That’s not too bad as we were supposed to have wifi when airborne! We are flying Norwegian airlines after all, and they have free wifi on board. Except that the wifi experience this time was not the best. It took a long time to open google, and it was impossible to open gmail. Some Norwegian newspaper webpages worked better, however. So no success with the map again.

We landed a couple of hours later in a snowy place next to a body of water, Longyearbyen. The mountains are not comparable to Alps, but so close to the sea they are still impressive. To get a better first impression 5 of us had decided to walk from the airport to the guesthouse. The others would go by bus (75 NOK) and take all the suitcases and large backpacks with them. The walk to the town centre is 4.5km, and to our guesthouse it’s 7km in total, so not impossible at all. Technically there’s a risk of polar bears between the airport and the boundary of the city (first 3km), but the risk of being hit by a car is in fact greater, so we didn’t worry about that much.

Polar bear sign

Polar bear sign

Jeans were perhaps not the best piece of clothing to wear for the walk as we had a head-wind and we were longing for some skiing-trousers which had gone along with the suitcases by the bus. On the positive side, we saw some reindeer and enjoyed the walk in other ways. We were not the first ones to reach the “Polar bears around” road sign, so our sticker was only about the 10th on that road-sign pole. But we have now marked our presence :)

We are living in 2 guesthouses which are located next to each other. Ours was said to have one public pc with internet connection. That sounded as a great potential for wifi to me, so I had taken a router with me to try to set it up. In the real life there had been some improvements and there were wifi routers in our building. Unfortunately having a router and having a wifi are two different things, as it wasn’t working. After some educational exploring we attached the power cable from my router to theirs and got the wifi signal. Later on when talking to the receptionist, we found out that this access point has been the previous wifi they have had and now they have a new system to connect to if we want internet. With one bar signal strength out of five in our building on good times that was not really usable, however, and the fact that they are supposedly working on improvements didn’t help either. So we were happy to use their old one without them noticing.

The guesthouses are nice. Both of them are very clean and warm. There’s a kitchen with all the pots, pans, plates and cutlery, a fridge, an oven and a stove and even a dishwasher. Thus we have a very good setup to prepare our own food which we have brought with us from Riga. However, just before the dinner there’s some fun going on outside – a snowmobile jumping show was a part of a restaurant opening celebration and our kitchen windows were perfectly positioned to see it. We went outside for a closer look and got a welcome drink on the house in the new restaurant.

This had been a long day, so after some cozy chatting around dinner table we went to sleep to be ready for a hiking trip on the following day.