Catching up

Its a week into the AMASE (Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition) but I am remiss in creating a blog.  I want to share more than Facebook soundbites about this trip, I've been waiting for this for months, and I want to actually have a record of this.  Most of the time, I will be working on 5 hours of sleep, and my writing will lack panache for sure, but hey, that's life.  I lost all my creative writing skills when I became a scientist ;-)

Yes, it really is that far north.

So, I will try to summarize the trip so far, starting with arrival in Oslo at 10 AM to find our luggage had not made it with us.  There is a black hole in Philadelphia, where luggage gets eaten.  The plan was to stay the night in Oslo at the airport hotel anyway, so we decided to head downtown and try to buy some long sleeved shirts in case the luggage did not come.  I knew that when we reached our final destination, Ny Alesund, the northernmost settlement in the world, I had clothes waiting for me, but between Oslo and Ny Alesund was a stop in Longyearbyen, the only town in Svalbard, and it would be cold.  Svalbard, by the way, is a remote island that is part of Norway, in the same way Hawaii is part of the US.  The mainland of Norway is about 4 hours away by plane from Svalbard.  Check it out on Google earth.  Its truly arctic.

Leffe all the way.  If I look exhausted, that's because I am.  

We needed something warm to tide us over, so  we took the train into Oslo (~$30 and 20 min) after our ~$40 caesar salads with chicken for luch.  Yes, Norway is expensive.  Even though we were exhausted, we fought jetlag (dusk coming around 10:30 helped this).  We made a fruitless search in two shopping centers for outdoor gear, settling on cotton long sleeved shirts.  Better than nothing.  There were some great outdoor beer gardens but we wanted a full meal, even if it cost a fortune, so headed to the harbor.  We had a nice dinner along the harbor (Duvel and mussels) and made it back to the hotel by 11 PM, exhausted and ready for bed.

I was fascinated by this sign.

It was all lit up at night and kept changing colors.

All of the old buildings were lit up like this one.

This crazy truck was at the harbor.

With the flash, it lit up.  Instant neon.