02nd October '22 | Postcards by Fabienne
Dark season is coming
Hej, hej :)
Happy Sunday! And to me, you are a happy bunch down there “in the south”. Fall is my favourite season and this year, I am missing it. But I am happy – Sven is coming to visit on Thursday and will stay for a week. Hence, I might take a break from a Postcard-Post next weekend 😉 Sven will stay with me for a couple of nights at the student accommodation, and then we will upgrade to a nice hotel for a mini-getaway. Really looking forward to it. Except for two guest lectures next Friday, lectures for this course are already over, and we now have to write an essay. Perfect timing to have some flexibility for Sven to visit. So, what was going on this week?
Monday - Thursday: We mainly had lectures and the evenings were rather cosy with cooking and watching movies in the kitchen.
Wednesday: We had a small excursion about avalanche safety, which was mostly repletion from the last course, but at least we got outside. I felt a bit blue and still stressed because of getting something defined for my thesis topic. So I decided I should take a break and finally went to the swimming hall – yes, we have the northernmost swimming pool up here. There is also a small sauna which I spontaneously used afterwards and felt so good!
Friday: I submitted an idea for my master thesis – now we just have to cross our fingers that it will be accepted by my home university. I want to write about training and exercises to increase survivability in case of expedition cruise accidents in the Arctic. In the evening, there was a researcher’s night organised at the university with some short educational and entertaining talks, different science activities and a quiz.
Saturday: Some random chores and tasks, might go to a bar later. There is the – of course, northernmost – Oktoberfest happening tonight. But we all know, this girl ain’t a crazy party animal.
Sunday: NOTHING. Okay, maybe swimming 😉
Remember when I talked about the midnight sun? Feels like yesterday. Polar night is approaching. Today, we have 10 hours of daylight (sunrise 07:39, sunset 17:50). Yes, we have lost ~15-20 minutes of daylight each day in September. As a reference, Cologne in Germany is losing 3-4 minutes each day). Here, daylight will continue to decrease daily by 15-30 min. until the last sunset on 26th October (and on this day, there is only 1 hour of daylight left). If you are curious, you can check it out here:
https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/norway/longyearbyen?month=10&year=2022
As daylight slowly disappears, I thought I show you some of the indoor activities that we can do here. Svalbardhallen is a multi-purpose activity and sports building between Longyearbyen “downtown” and the southern part Nybyen. It’s roughly 1 km to walk from the student accommodation.
There is a gym or training room. It’s not extremely big, but equipped with all you need to get your booty working. I was thinking of signing up but since there are different memberships for swimming and training, I decided that I could work my booty on my Yoga mat in my room and go swimming instead.
There is a 25m pool with a pretty nice view! It is also used for kayak polo 2-3 times per week. Still have to try it since going kayaking in the fjord will soon not be possible anymore.
Svalbardhallen also features a sports hall for football, volleyball, etc. At one side of the hall, there is a boulder and climbing wall.
The student welfare organisation and some separate student groups organise different activities such as dance classes, knitting circles and board game nights. These mainly take place at the cantina of the university. Though it is the official cantina, it gets super cosy there – especially with the fireplace!
On Friday, there was a researcher’s night for university members but also for the local community including kids. The evening started with some snacks and 5x10 minutes of educational and entertaining talks about ice and glacier dynamics, tiny Arctic marine life, avalanche safety and more.
Then, everybody was free to visit different rooms with hands-on activities related to Arctic biology, technology, geology, geophysics and glaciology!
We then finished off with some more food and a quiz in the cantina.
Well, right now, I am looking forward to the cosiness of the dark season and can’t wait for proper snow – and northern lights! We would have been able to see them from here the last few days, but unfortunately, we are covered in fog and snow. Fun fact: To see NORTHERN lights from here, we have to look south since we are higher north than the typical latitude of northern lights.
Stay warm and cosy 😊
/ Fabi ❆⇞