And we’s back in the game.  Hyggelig å se dere.  Or something like that.  So what in the world have I been up to?  Well, you know, the normal Tromsø life.  So what in the world does that entail?  Well, glad you asked.

Actually, if you’ll kindly juggle that thought, your breath, and your horses for just a wee moment, I should first finish the play-by-play from my way long ago batch of pictures.  Here we go…

Firstly, when I was staying for the night in Oslo I met a guy in the lobby of the hostel who also happened to be from the US.  And lo and behold, he was also a computer science student and he had recently graduated from Berkeley.  John was just beginning a 6-week bike tour of Norway, and he was going to be passing through Tromsø that weekend, so we made plans to connect up.  Aside from seeing the midnight sun and lounging about, our main adventure was a trip up to the top of a nearby mountain via the Fjellheisen (of future Arctic Week fame).

Trek across the bridge toward the mainland.  You can see the little cabin at the top of the mountain.

It goes up ~400m in elevation with no midway supports!  After getting butted out of line by a swarm of German tourists, we eventually made it onto one of the cars.
 

They warn naughty children that misbehavers are eaten by the boogey man who rides the tops of the cable cars, but in actuality, there’s no boogey man.

It’s a German tourist.

The city in a bit of its glory.

We decided to get away from the crowds by hiking to the top, which looked deceptively close.

After a long while, we made it to the wind-flag-pointy thing!

What we’d thought was the top was, in fact, not, so we ventured onward toward more false tops.  We got to two more, the latter of which was somewhat toplike and had another huge pile of rocks, so we felt accomplished and wound our way back.  If you dare, you can check out the fairly unsuccessful attempt at a panorama.  It’s interesting from the perspective of learning how automatic camera exposure and the photo-stitching software work, but not ultimately satisfying.  Not as cool as this.

The whole thing took several hours, and when we got back to the lodge we were starving.  It was then that I had my first dash of reindeer.  Delicious!  We blitzed through dinner, donned our gear, and danced all the way home.  Ha!  Okay, actually we took our time, enjoyed the view, and eventually braved the long walk back.

So that’s it.  Now, at long last, have we come to the end of all the unusual happenings and goings-on that have interspersed my days.  What’s left?  To a large extent, mostly just three things: working, eating, and sleeping.  I’ll add a fuller post later about all these, but in short…  Work’s been a lot of fun.  I learned a splendid new programming language, we get free lunch, I have internet access to do crazy things like posting these entries, and most importantly, it’s enjoyable and interesting work.  Eating is necessary to stay alive, but it also sometimes tastes real good.  Sleeping is something wholly foreign to me, but it, too, can be delightful.  I will merely throw out some figures such as… 24 hours / 2 days * 2 weekends in a row.  Rock.  On.

In other news, I am taking reading suggestion donations.  Please contribute!  Preferably books that can be found here.

Okay, the end.  For now.

Now we’re getting to the good stuff!  I’ve been back for a while now, but it takes a while to recover from a fantabulous trip filled with lots of fun and not too much sleep, so I have an excuse.  Arctic Week is an annual trip organized by IAESTE, (mostly) for participants working throughout Norway.  It went from Saturday July 16^th until Sunday July 24^th and was, in short, absolutely awesome!

There are five interns here in Tromsø, and four of us went on the trip, along with 23 others from all over.  I really really enjoyed getting to know the people on the trip, who hailed from the following countries: Norway (our two guides), United States (2), Ireland (5), Austria (2), Poland (2), Malta, Brazil, Bosnia, China (2), Canada, Sudan, Oman, Turkey, Thailand, Belgium, and The Netherlands (3).  Quite a mix!  We mostly spoke English (the only language everyone knew), but conversations would occasionally break out in German, Polish, French, Arabic, or Dutch.  Interestingly, people probably had the hardest time understanding some of the Irish.

Here’s a general map of our route:

Started out in Tromsø, ended up in Bodø, and hit up the gorgeous Lofoten islands for most of the middle.  And now it’s time for a breakdown…

I’ll spare you the duplicated pics, but again, you can follow along at http://www.stanford.edu/~bdangelo/arcticweek/ for all the gruesome details.

Saturday – Tromsø

We met up on Saturday as people rolled in from the airport.  I joined them in the late afternoon, though in retrospect it probably would have been nice to be one of the first ones there so’s I could learn names and get to know them one at a time.  In the evening we took the Fjellheisen (mountain elevator) up the mountain.  Had a delicious dinner (we were starving) of reindeer stew and mashed potatoes.  Apparently wasn’t a very traditional Norwegian meal, and some people found it really spicy, but it hit the spot.  There was one vegetarian on the trip, so we made her eat Rudolph.  Full to the brim, we hiked up to what appeared to be the top of the mountain, passing some patches of snow on the way.  It was a couple guys’ first time in snow!  That necessitated a snowball fight, of course.  After a bit of admiring the view at the top, we headed back down and walked into town.  Negotiated a couple pubs (though at >$8 for a glass of beer one is encouraged to simply enjoy the music and atmosphere), and it was most people’s first time seeing it so light out in the middle of the night.  It was fun seeing everyone’s reactions, having become pretty familiar with it myself.  Massive throngs of people cruised the (carless) street, and what a few of us intended to be a quick stop at a kebab stand for ei pølse ended up taking near on 45 minutes thanks to limited workers and a disorganized line.  Tasted all the better, though.

We were staying for the night in the gym of an elementary school.  There was tons of gymnastic equipment everywhere, so we all slept on the pads and dreamt of the horse, floor exercises, and rings.  Actually, someone was snoring and it was really bright cause there were no curtains, so it was more like we tossed fitfully on the pads and wished we could stay asleep long enough to hit some REM cycles.

Sunday – Tromsø

Visited the Polaria museum, featuring a handful of fish, exhibits about the arctic, and some snazzy bearded seals.  And also this really cool whirlpool generator that reminded me how much I love the flow of liquids.  I wish I knew more about fluid dynamics.  Did some lounging about, playing football (soccer) in the schoolyard.  Had a BBQ over on Telegrafbukta, a beautiful park area right on the water, with these one-time use BBQ trays that seem to be all the rage here.  We played some cards, tossed the Frisbee around a bit, and I taught a group of people how to play ultimate.  It was semi-successful on the small and uneven grass, but lots of fun.  I even had time to catch a shower back in my own room before we all boarded the midnight Hurtigruten ferry to begin a ~16 hour boat ride.  For me, the trip now felt like it was beginning!  We hung about for a while, explored the decks, and eventually decided to try to get a bit of sleep on the floor of the eensy-weensy conference room they’d set aside for us.  I think ‘cozy’ is the word I’m looking for.  Yes.  Cozy.

Monday – Ferry to Svolvær/Kabelvåg

I was sleeping right next to the table where they laid out breakfast, so I only had to reach out to snag a piece of bread.  And on my other side was the water cooler, so I could reach out to get a plastic cup of water.  Nothing like breakfast in bed on a boat…  After some brød with jam/chocolate, we mostly kicked it on the boat all day.  The boat made a couple stops (people ventured ashore to get some stuff from the store), but mostly it was smooth sailing through the beautiful fjords of Norway.  Pictures just don’t capture it.  ‘It’ is pretty much uncapturable by anything but being here and experiencing it for yourself.  What’s especially amazing I think is not just the huge steep mountains, but their direct contrast, nay, juxtaposition, with the water.  If we were out hiking and saw them it would be one thing, but in scattered island form they are even more eye-catching.  If you are a mountain person, hie thee to Norway!

We docked in Svolvær around 16:30 and took a bus to the hostel in Kabelvåg that would become our home for three nights.  I bonded with the other people making dinner by stepping up for dishes duty, and in the night we went on a short exploratory hike past a graveyard and up to some rock that was important in WWII.  People were interested in hiking to try to see the midnight sun (even though it was bright in Tromsø, people hadn’t actually seen the sun itself at midnight), but decided to push that to the next day.

Tuesday – Kabelvåg

In the morning, a handful of people (if you can fit eleven people in your hand) decided to venture on a quest for the midnight sun.  Everyone else would probably be renting bikes/kayaks, and having a whale-meat BBQ in the evening.  It was reeeally tempting to go on the hike, but I was weighed by the following facts:

• it would take most of the day to hike there, and we wouldn’t start back until after midnight.
  
• I’d seen the midnight sun and secretly knew that… shhh… nothing very different happens at midnight… shh…. ok
  
• biking/kayaking seemed like a lot of fun
  
• a whale of a BBQ sounded culinarily intriguing
  

So that was that.  Those of us who were sticking around scoped out the rental situation and decided to go with bikes, which were actually in pretty good condition.  Off to explore the neighboring town or a beach, whichever came first.  Now, I’m used to biking around campus a lot, but biking amidst majestic fjords is way cooler.  It was slightly hilly, but they came in pairs so weren’t too much work.  But every time you look up, it’s just… wow.  To demonstrate the multiplicative effect that traveling in groups has on intelligence, we decided to bike through this long dark tunnel (we were on a road, and the road went through, and there was no other way to get to the other side…).  As you well know, it’s all fun and games until someone gets attacked by bats in a tunnel and grows up to be an awesome crimefighter.  Or until there’s an accident.  Luckily, we managed to convince some lady in a car to drive behind us so that cars speeding through wouldn’t blindly run into us.  She was nice enough to do her part, but several cars instead sped around her.  And let me tell you, cars passing (either way) sounded like jets taking off when amplified by the tunnel (which my more musical side found interesting and my more pragmatic side found disturbing).  In any case, we made it through safely and agreed not to travel in such a large group on the way back.

We found a beach, wherein a rocking good time was had by all.  I waded up to my thighs in the water, and some people went all the way in.  To my senses, it felt freezing, like nearly every natural body of water I have ever been in, but in actuality it probably was the same as the Pacific in Northern California (which is three millionths of a degree above freezing).  Played a ton of catch with the frisbee on the open sand, and it felt soo good to be able to run and jump.  We played for a long while, but stopped after one member (not I!) made a graceful throw that soared, soared, arced, curved, curved, descended, dropped directly into a baby carriage behind a group of people.  Keep in mind that the beach was nearly empty except for way off on this one side…  We tried not to have heart attacks as I approached, and thankfully, thankfully, the baby was cooing and giggling on the sand a little ways away with the people.  One of the adults in the group turned her head and said something sort of laughingly as I fetched the Frisbee, and I apologized and stepped lightly as I made my way back to our towels, where we took up the safer activity of staring at seaweed.

Dinner was delicious.  Norway is somewhat infamous for their staunch stance when it comes to whaling, which is to ignore the environmentalists in the rest of the world (sound familiar?).  There are yearly quotas and strict regulations, but it’s still a pretty controversial topic.  While I might feel bad ordering whale every day of the week, I figured one meal wouldn’t cause anyone to… should I say it?… dare I?... ok… blubber.  I’m sorry.  That was a really bad pun.  I should take it back.  I’m sorry…  Right, anyway, it tasted very good, mostly of whatever marinade it  had, and had a noticeably different texture from beef (more consistent and less stringy, kind of like those processed steak patties you can get in the dining hall, but less scary).  This meal brought my strange-animal consumption count up to its height of 2 for the trip.

One of the guys I got to know best on the trip was Kevin.  Like me, he is a physics student from Ireland, sings (and plays) bass in a band, beatboxes, is a fan of good music, and is generally pretty weird (I may not have one or two of these traits).  But we had a lot of fun together, and after dinner we finally managed to conquer The Rock (it was harder to get someone up there than it looks!).

Wednesday – Kabelvåg/Svolvær

Wednesday was fishing day.  After some miscommunication, the group missed the boat in the morning, so we walked a bit around Svolvær and had a delicious pizza lunch while waiting for an afternoon boat.  The boat took us around for a little while, including back to the awesome Trollfjord (we’d been in and out on the Hurtigruten), where the boat could go right up to the side and we could fill up cups with water off the rock face.  Slightly brown, but refreshing.

The first place we tried to stop to fish, there was very little action.  I think the fisherman caught 5 fish on one line in the time the rest of us caught 1 fish on about 20 lines, but we decided to keep moving.  Same thing happened at the next place we went.  I guess when this happens they let out all the stops, because he then took us right adjacent to these fishery nets.  Well, I don’t know what they were, but there were fish jumping inside, and I think other fish from the sea think there’s something cool going on so they come to check it out.  We let out our lines (near but not inside the nets) and the fish starting biting like mad.  It was a strange mix of “oh yay we’re catching all these fish” and “oh gross there’s fish blood and guts everywhere”.  Good to experience for a day, but no way would I want to be a fisherman.

In the evening, several of us cleaned the fish, purging ourselves of any desire to ever eat anything resembling a fish again.  But when they were BBQed up, they didn’t smell so bad and we were famished, so we gave in.  It had also come out several days ago that my birthday was approaching.  At the stroke of midnight, people sang me Happy Birthday, and many of the girls even demonstrated their countries’ excellent tradition of giving one, two, or three kisses on the cheek.  I could get used to this cultural exchange thing…

Thursday – Bus to Å

Much of the early portion of my birthday was spent sleeping on the bus.  I won’t go into detail on this part (there were more gorgeous mountains yada yada yada).  But we eventually came to a real live… Viking museum!  There was a portion that had exhibits like a normal museum, but the coolest parts were a couple rooms (more like halls) made to look authentic, filled with all the tools, decorations, looms, plants, animal skins, and weapons that Viking money could buy or that Viking warriors could pillage.  And even better, we got an authentic Viking stew lunch served right out of a huge cauldron in the middle of the room.  It was surprisingly flavorful and filling, alongside some sort of tasty bread and some extraordinarily sweet mead, a kind of wine made from honey.

The rest of the day was pretty low-key.  We made it to Å (that’s the entire name of the town; recall: basically pronounced “oh”).  We settled into the house that is legally owned by humans but sonically owned by seagulls.  Their nests were literally right outside the windows.  Most people would be sleeping there, but I myself shared a room just across the pier above the café.  Several of us went to play some pick-up football at a small field with a couple local kids.  Came back to a light pasta salad dinner, went on a delightful stroll… and that capped off the day.

Friday – Å

People split up again today.  Some who’d previously gone hiking rented bikes.  A bunch of us others rented a couple motor boats and cruised around looking for the Maelstrom and/or Hell.  Actually, we intentionally avoided going anywhere near the Maelstrom, which is one of the world’s strongest tidal currents, and we didn’t make it to the small town called Hell on the tip of the islands.  But we coulda.

In the evening, we had another BBQ (more pølser!) and I taught a few people the basics of pass juggling.  We then geared up for one last final attempt to see the midnight sun, a ~7 hour hike to and from a 400 something meter mountain.  This definitely ended up being one of my favorite parts of the whole trip.  The path we took to get around the lake was muddy, rocky, and at times treacherous.  I am amazed that everyone actually made it over this one ravine.  We made it to the other side of the lake to a small beach, where one person decided to go in the water.  We then began the condensed uphill portion that took us to the ridge.  Up up up, quite the calf workout, until finally… we reached the ridge and got a glimpse of the huge basin, lake, and sun on the other side.  It was surreal.  Especially after the climb, especially being in the center of a huge wind channel, and when we got to the top I started laughing.  The view gave new meaning to “breath-taking”.  The wind was bitter cold, and strong enough that just holding a bottle at an angle would make it whistle.

After lugging water, chocolate, and various salted snacks up a mountain, it felt great to sit back and have a snack.  Unfortunately the sun went behind another mountain, so people still didn’t get to see the official midnight sun, but I don’t think anyone minded too much.  On the way back, at one point I was walking by myself across this marshy area and started getting harassed by a seagull.  I didn’t know where the nest was but was concentrating on not falling in the mud, and it kept swinging around, dive-bombing and screeching at me.  To prevent things from reaching a Hitchcock level I turned around and went the long way around the marsh, but all in all it was a sort of cute, protective-parent experience.  The rest of the way back (along a less treacherous route) was filled with excellent conversation and lovely company, and with it still light out I wouldn’t have minded an even longer walk.

Once back, a bunch of us sat around into the wee hours.  For some reason we were completely giddy from the hike and found everything absolutely hilarious.  A perfect nachtspiel.

Saturday – Bus to Bodø

Rolled out of bed just in time to make it to the bus, as it was time to catch the ferry to Bodø.  Grabbed a hamburger from a café at the dock for breakfast and boarded the boat.  It was a shorter and less exciting trip than the Hurtigruten, but we were all still so tired that it was nice to just sit around, talk, and nap.  We relaxed briefly at the cabins in Bodø, kicked around the football, then headed out to a restaurant.  More pizza, the universal crowd-pleaser, mmm mmm.  Then wandered around until we found a pub, and we happened to be the only ones there for a little while.  People were being reluctant to get up and dance, but after I jumped up and demonstrated that dancing is not only for cool people, a crowd soon followed.  I tried a couple times through the night doing swing and salsa with people, but it’s just not the same without a partner who knows what you know.  Nonetheless, throwing in a lot of ballroom, hip hop, emulations of David Elsewhere, and random moving to the music is a heck of a lot of fun.  We stayed up way too late, but it being the last night, not late enough.

Sunday – Flight home

Woke up when I’d been intending to leave for the airport.  Despite helter-skelter confusion, I crammed my stuff together, said quick goodbyes, and taxied to the airport.  Even had time to sit around and twiddle my thumbs a bit before boarding my run-of-the-mill, one-stop flight back to Tromsø.

So, ladies and gents, that was my week.  Hopefully you got a small taste of just how much fun it was.  Really, the pictures are like dirt compared to the real thing.  I’d love to do the whole trip over again, but will probably stick with trying to go forward in time, creating new memories and maybe trying to meet up with some of the people from the trip.

If you stuck with me to the end, congrats.  You get a sticker of a puppy.

So let me take you on a tour from my room to downtown.  It’s about a 15 minute walk, mostly downhill.  We start with a nice path alongside this meadow thing:

which heads out to the road:

As you can see, the bus stop is really close, which is handy for getting to work faster in the morning in case it’s raining or you’ve decided to get an extra 15 minutes of sleep (which I would never do).  It’s not quite as cool as the Marguerite without the realtime online bus map, and it’s pretty darn expensive (~$2), but it’s a nice bus system all around the island and my bus card has served me well.

I then take a road through a beautiful cemetery:

The majority of the times I walk by, I see people visiting/tending graves, walking through, or sitting on benches.  It’s very nice.  Might be a little more unsettling in the dark of winter though.

Tromsø is surrounded by beautiful mountains, most of which are still snowcapped.  The road opens up a bit to get a glimpse:

Continuing downhill, you can see the bridge across to the mainland and the church across the way, which are two of Tromsø’s symbols.  And some pretty flowers.  Yay.

Almost there…

On the right of the blue building you can see the top of the intersecting-hyperboloid-spaceship-shaped building being renovated into the library.  That’s real close to where I work.

And we’ve reached downtown, the Sentrum:

A portion of the main road, Storgata, is closed off to cars and is usually a-bustling with people.  There are a lot of shops, little stands selling kebabs or pølser (hot dogs), and yes, even the northernmost one of these:

I got a combo-meal because… it had to be done.  It was delicious because I was hungry, but not much special, and it put me out a little over $10.  Have I said already how expensive Norway is?   It is.

And here’s the final stop of the tour.

On your right you’ll see the bridge and church again, the harpoon guy statue, and a bunch of touristy stands.  Oh, and a couple seagulls.  I don’t think I’ve mentioned them yet, but they deserve a mention.  Actually, they deserve more than that, but I’m trying to keep this entry polite.

You see, the birds here have discovered a remarkable ability to make really loud, piercing squawks.  And even better, they’ve discovered that they have this ability at all times of the day!  So cool!  I think much in the same way that I might say something like “hey check out this cool percussion noise I just figured out” and then do it all across campus, some bird was once trying to make percussion noises, accidentally made a loud annoying squawk, and decided to tell all his friends.  Um, not that this is karma or anything.  In any case, the seagulls seem to be very smart, very interested in keeping you away from their young, and very hungry for any food you are eating, have eaten, or are imagining someday eating.  They are very well trained.  My residence is across the street from the aforementioned lake, which is home to many a beakéd beast:

Okay, they’re not that bad, but they add a little spice to the Tromsø life, so to speak.

And speaking of the lake, here are a few pics from a late-night stroll around it:

These are from around 11:15-45 pm.  Gotta love that midnight sun!  And with that, I’m off to take a break.