Kitchen2Kitchen!

Hello and welcome to a very drunken edition of dispatches from the high arctic! hope everyone had a good Easter holiday. Apparently Easter is a drinking holiday over here! So, anyway, to leave you no longer in suspense as to why I'm wearing Bunny Ears and a milk carton and sipping from a plastic cup (with my little pinky out, classy eh?) let me tell you all about one of the greatest UNIS traditions: the Kitchen2kitchen party!

the idea is very simple, there are four kitchens in each barrack, and those that choose to participate make a welcome drink, decorate the kitchen and dress up in that theme. as most readily demonstrated by the Zoo in Barrack 4! well done to Margrete, idunn, Andrea, Laura, Jordan and the others!


but its not just us whole semester students that get in on the fun, the short termers, dressed as penguins, just added more kitchens to the crawl!

So, let me take you, as best I can, on a drinking tour of Nybyen. It all kicked of with a rave themed kitchen in barrack 11 at 7 o'clock, although the organisers of this kitchen had been drinking for much longer! then it was off to a kitchen themed 'old peoples home'. then, braving the cold to barrack 4 it was mango flavoured drinks in the playboy mansion and a drink in the Zoo.

then it was off across Nybyen to the short term barracks (beer jackets on to stay warm!) to the south pole kitchen, where they'd cleverly made a tent into an igloo, which got ridiculously crowded, so we unzipped the back, and found ourselves trapped in the corner of the room!

from there it was on to the other short term barrack, where I ended up drinking baileys from the bottle with someone from Bergen! I love international universities! i even managed to find some more Brits, although they were on their way home the next day!

by now, the majority of us students were quite tipsy and it was time to move on to the best barrack of all: 9! we had to run past the hotel, doubtlessly waking up all the tourists, who thoughtfully came to the windows to wave at us! the first kitchen in 9 was themed after a popular advert here, for tine brand milk, featuring the song, I think by Herman's Hermits 'No milk today', so we all drank cocktails that were supposed to contain milk (like white russians), but without milk! then it was whiskey and hot chocolate in the outdoor themed kitchen, and cake and vodka jelly in the kids party kitchen. going well, only one more barrack to go, think you'd have made it?


Brendan, Dayle, Sara and Judith. the boys looking a little worse for wear!

so on to Barrack 13, Austrian Alex obviously very drunk by now, judging by his dress and dancing! where it was a few more drinks and then time, at 1.30 to call it a night!

Ben finds a guitar to continue partying

recovered yet? not sure I have! Easter, otherwise, was generally quite uneventful. with plenty of work and procrastination to be getting on with! but we had gorgeous weather most of the time (except for quite a big snow storm) and we even spotted a Halo around the sun one day

I should also mention, primarily for Hannah's sake, (I was on the phone to her at the time) that Dayle's Lisa balloon (He jokingly insulted her one time too many and consequently promised to make the next day 'be nice to Lisa day' which included trying to make a hot air balloon!) managed to support its own weight, but just wouldn't take off.

I was sitting on my windowsil watching and taking pictures with my long lens, when I again heard the immortal words: "Dayle, Fire!"

Although this time it wasn't so bad!

other than that Easter was a great oppurtunity for dinner parties (mostly pizza and spag bol!) and watching films, Easter sunday was the best, as we had a giant easter brunch, with cooked breakfast and lots of cake and chocolate!

oh, and I almost forgot, we made a giant tin can phone across from barrack 9 to barrack 4, but I don't have any pictures, so I'll try to get hold of some and post them next time!

With Easter over, its back to UNIS and back to the routine, of friday gathering that is! in fact it was so nice outside this friday that we decided to have the first hour or so on the roof! which offers fantastic views of the residential part of longyearbyen

and up the valley towards the glaciers and Nybyen

what better place to sip some beers after a long week of learning than here, overlooking the mountains and the frozen fjord?

I think Ben, Jenn and Elisabeth agree!

thats it for today, i've got work to be getting on with

bye for now and thanks for reading

Ash

Hello there, sorry for the delay in blogging this time, especially to Vicky, who apparently is my most avid reader! I’m on field work at the EISCAT Svalbard radar this week, a facility that measures Ionospheric parameters (but more about that later!) so its been hard to find time to write.

The weather here has been pretty much fantastic lately, except for a huge snow storm on Thursday night/Friday morning that prevented us from getting EISCAT for our introductory look round. Its still pretty cold though. The temperature is about minus 20 still. Today is the last day that we have ‘night’ and in about two weeks time, on April 19th the sun is still above the horizon at midnight; the midnight sun! The transition between 24 hour darkness and the midnight sun has come so quickly. So I was right, the Aurora from the previous blog is the last we will see.

To take advantage of the beautiful weather and rare time off, Me, Colin and Dayle went on a short scooter trip to the other side of the airport, but we couldn’t go any further because of the lack of a rifle and the potential presence of Polar Bears in Bjorndalen valley, not much further on.

We luckily (unluckily?) didn’t see any Polar Bears despite the optimism we exhibited by bringing telephoto lens and binoculars! We did however see a curious and friendly reindeer:

Other than EISCAT, that concludes my escapades beyond Longyearbyen since my last blog! We did however engage in the very British tradition of going on a pub crawl! This, of course required a warm up session by Me, James and Colin at Friday gathering!

On Saturday night a large group of us headed down to Barentz pub in the Radisson SAS hotel for food and the first drinks of our pub crawl (I had a cider that wasn’t Kopparberg, but it was £4 a bottle!) most ate giant Pizzas, the Italian one looked fantastic, covered in rocket, there was a beef pizza and the one I had, a taco pizza which had beef and tortilla chips on it! Its probably the best food I have eaten this year, which is not so much a compliment to the chef at Barentz pub, but an indication of the below par food available in the supermarkets here (especially on a student budget!)

Kjersti, Sarah, ‘Shirley’ and Ben

‘The Cave’ – James, Colin, Matt and Ben outside the Radisson

So it was off to the next pub on our crawl, Karlsberg pub, which must have the largest collection of whiskeys and cognacs I’ve ever seen. Using my immense knowledge of scotches (!) I selected (little better than closing my eyes and pointing really!) an Isle of Jura scotch, a double of which setting me back over £10! The rest of the party was similarly ripped off for drinks.

Savouring the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought!

And so it was on to the ohh so comically named Svalbar, I bet someone is still congratulating themselves for coming up with that. The last bar on the crawl. Okay, admittedly it wasn’t much of a pub crawl, but this is the Arctic, so we did the best we could!

And so on to my fieldwork at EISCAT. EISCAT (European Incoherent SCATter) is a European scientific organisation that operates incoherent scatter radar dishes up here in Longyearbyen (EISCAT Svalbard Radar), and UHF and VHF system in Tromso, northern Norway, as well as receivers in Sodankylä, Finland and Kiruna, Sweden.

A powerful beam of radar waves is transmitted into the Ionosphere (the part of the atmosphere between about 90 and 600 km up) where solar radiation dissociates ions and electrons and the Aurora occur. The interaction of the waves with these charged particles causes a weak backscattered which is detected by the receiver. Some complex maths is done (which we have been learning about in the ‘Radar diagnostics of space plasma’ course) and a spectrum is produced from which the electron density, Ion and electron temperatures and the bulk flow of the ionosphere can be obtained. Typical results look like:

Which are the real time analysed data plots for the experiment we are running at time of writing.
The facility here on Svalbard has two huge dishes, a steerable 32m antenna and a fixed, magnetic field aligned 42m antenna.

The fixed 42m antenna looks directly up the magnetic field line.

While the steerable 32m antenna (seen from below the 42m antenna) can be pointed anywhere or can be used to scan different portions of the sky.

Its all operated from a modern bank of computers

Which have the best office view in town!

But all this luxury couldn’t last. In return for antenna time we had to go into the 42m antenna to dig out snow!

But being inside the big dish did make for some good group pictures!

Kjellmar (lecturer), Nils, Dayle, Brendan and Halvard (EISCAT engineer), seated Colin

And we had a bit of fun after too, Colin taking his turn at supporting the big dish!

So what else is there to say? Well, there a big Avalanche risk at the moment. On the way home from EISCAT on Monday, Dayle was in the front car with some EISCAT engineers and our lecturer Kjellmar, whilst me, Brendan, Colin and Nils were in the second car. Dayle says as they approached the road below Mine 2b, 5 minutes walk from Nybyen, the engineers started swearing and saying ‘Avalanche’. The snow had fallen all the way down the mountainside on to the road, making it impassable. My barrack mate Jennifer had been walking along the road at the time and ran out of the way. Its a good thing we hadn’t been on the road a minute or so earlier.

Big blocks of snow on the road below mine 2b

Passersby survey the avalanche.

The avalanche just makes it to the road, preventing traffic getting through.

In an attempt to avert further avalanches, the Sysselman (governor) carried out a controlled explosion of the cornices (snow overhangs) near mine 2b, another avalanche in the same are occurring just before the explosives were detonated! We have now been told to avoid walking along the bottom of the mountainside at Nybyen, and to move the snow scooters from behind barrack 9 into the valley and not to use the scooter track along the valley side. Evidently the Sysselman thinks there is a danger of further avalanches in the area, but isn’t taking very direct action. There were reports that the Larsbreen glacier was closed but these turned out to be false.

I guess we all just have to be extra careful from now on, makes me glad my room is on the valley side!

Bye for now

Ash

Drinking Jenga, Arctic BBQ, High School Musical and the last Auroras?

Hello there! i've been a proper little tourist this week and walked down to the Polar bear sign down by the docks, with my tripod on my back to take the customary picture of me standing by the sign. Apparently Polar Bears "concern all (Gjelder hele)" of Svalbard. other than that its been work as usual, learning about reconnection of the Interplanetary magnetic field with the geomagnetic field and the large scale structure of the Earth's magnetosphere, as well as discussing our up coming trip to Eiscat Svalbard radar with our lecturer.

On thursday night a contingent of barrack 9 ventured to barrack 4 (my favourite watering hole!) to put James' drinking Jenga through its paces. this was followed by another heavy night at friday gathering. which brings us to the weekend.

Sunday started with Dayles idea to go skiing as it was such a lovely day, but there were very few skis and even fewer boots left, so whats the next best thing to do on a sunny day in the Arctic?...ARCTIC BBQ!!!

thus the men, in keeping with traditional gender roles headed out to hunt for some meat (which was conveniently killed, processed, frozen and sold by Svalbardbutikken supermarket), on returning to barrack 4 we left the women to prepare the food (chopping onions, defrosting the bread and microwaving the frozen meat) whilst men make fire, ugg!

Unfortunately, we had to use disposible BBQs in lieu of real fire! (how much of a market is there for disposible BBQs in the Arctic?!)

Colin with nicely cooked burgers and burnt sausages, it wouldn't be a BBQ without burnt sausages!

Me, now fully fledged beef eater (through necessity!) munching on a beef burger

Colin, Lisa, Judith and Dayle around the BBQs

the same group moments later, included solely because its such a flattering picture of Lisa and Dayle scoffing their faces!

Judith and Brendan

Colin posing with a burger.

Apparently me and Colin's singing around the 'campfire' reminded Judith and Lisa of High school Musical (not sure whether thats a complement or not) and that we simply must go inside and watch High School Musical 2 and 3, with ice cream. By this point it was so cold and the offer of ice cream so tempting (don't point out the obvious stupidity of that sentence, I haven't had ice cream for nearly 3 months!) that we were powerless to refuse.

Paul and Hannah would have been proud of me, watching 2 and 3 back to back. in the necessary break between the two, it was decided that what we really needed to cap off a day of unhealthy eating was a cake, so I quickly through together a chocolate sponge mix, which the girls filled with chopped up toblerone, delicious!

sounds like a good day so far? hmm, maybe some Aurora to finish it off, eh? so with the Sun barely down (still quite light on the western horizon) out we went for what could be the last Aurora I'll see because polar day is pretty much here.

Nybyen and Longyearbyen at 11 o'clock

Barrack 11 in the twilight

Green Aurora over Sacrofagen

Longer exposure, Green (and maybe some red) Aurora over Sacrofagen.

bye for now

Ash

Brace Yourselves!

Brace yourselves indeed! In fact, you might want to put the kettle on before you go any further, because this is going to be a long one! perhaps its just been an exciting week, or perhaps I'm feeling guilty about the paucity of photos and information in the last few posts, but this one is positively epic. lots of fire, sliding down hills and sea ice, no baked goods!

I guess the most obvious thing is; THE SUN IS BACK!!! I saw it briefly above Larsbreen Glacier one day on the way back to Nybyen, by the next day the clouds had disappeared, and the mountainsides glowed with reflected sunlight (and this at half 8 in the morning), by the time we got to the travel companies offices on the hill above UNIS the Sun was rising above the town. Polar night is well and truely over, and it isn't long now until the Sun sets for the last time! which probably means the Aurora of Firday night were the last I am going to see (alas, I did not have my camera with me!) but they were very good, dancing across the night sky.


The Sun over the residential part of town. UNIS and the hills across Adventfjorden bathed in sunlight!

In fact the days have been so nice, we've been going for quick wanders for the pleasure of it! Me, James and Colin headed down towards the Sea Ice, more in hope than expectation of seeing any seals (!) and were afforded spectacular views both of the valley and the Sunlight over Longyearbyen. Some intrpid souls were venturing out on the sea ice, so we left, because James said he didn't want to get wet and cold rescuing them if they fell in!

Well, From ice to fire (I promised there would be fire!). As part of the Sun festival here in Longyearbyen, there is a competition called Ta Sjansen. For this teams build sledges out of scrap and race them down a mountain side! Given that Dayle and Brendan were still in posession of a scrap snow scooter (With no track, I may add) that had been used as a engine parts donor for their scooter, it was decided to turn this into Ta Sjansen sledge. So off we ventured to the Sea garage.

There, we set about sheding some of the weight of the scooter by removing engine parts. Dayle decided the softly softly approached adopted by myself, Brendan and Colin was, shall we say, insufficient for the job and decided an angle grinder was a far more pertinent tool for the job than the hammers, screw drivers and allen keys so far employed! he did, however forget one important thing: remaining fuel plus sparks equals fire!

Dayle tried to smother the small fire using his welding gloves, but this didn't work. the amusement at a small fire soon turned to concern as Brendan and Dayle between them couldn't get a) the fire extinguisher off the wall, and b) when they did couldn't get it to work. As they pulled the scooter out of the sea garage and started throwing snow on it, I flagged down a passing UNIS van and the guy calmly removed his portable fire extinguisher and put the fire out. He returned shortly after, with a new, persumably working fire extinguisher for the sea garage. Crisis over! and thus ended my participation in the project!

after this the theme of the sledge became fire. It was made to look like a dragon (well, judge for yourself) and the team called themselves the 'inflammable gods' after an email we had recieved a few weeks previously from the people responsible for the housing up here, advising us to keep "inflammable gods" (goods) in a certain location near the barracks!

Saturday of last weekend turned out to be a fabulous day and we left early to get a band wagon (like the one used to get us to the Kjell Henriksen observatory) across Adventdalen valley to the base of the mountains you can see behind UNIS in the photos.

Looking up the mountain, track to left, James and Jenn (on Polar bear watch) contemplated going to get a burger.

Looking back down the mountain (Dayle in his snow scootering gear in the foreground) at the Longyearbyen valley and the Sun above the mountain where Eiscat and the KHO are.

The inflammable gods dragon, which used to be a snow scooter

There was even entertainment!

The first of the UNIS sledges "Rosa Isbjørn" (the pink polar bear) containing Juni, Stine, Anna and Anya makes its way down the slope...

... its mast soon detaches...

...then its inflatables start to pop and its all downhill from there!

theres nothing for it, they'll just have to get up and walk...

...which brought to mind that scene in Cool runnings!

they still got a big cheer as they crossed the line!

Next UNIS sledge is Carl, who has cunningly parcel taped skis to an office chair...

...he got pretty far...

...before the inevitable happened!

And it turned out getting it going again wasn't that easy...

...not that easy at all...

this one speaks for itself!

In the end it was much easier to run down the slope, ski-office chair in hand and throw it over the finish line!

My favourite sledge of the day was the reclining polar bear made from a snow scooter

Although all credit to the 'prirates of Spitsbergen'!

and the team who thought music and flashing lights was more important than speed!

and the team who couldn't even be bothered to get out of bed for the race!

So finally I come to the Inflammable gods, by this point my extremities are frozen and my camera is complaining its too cold by showing low battery warnings (it took 307 photos before finally packing up, 1 photo after the final sledge). After moving about 5 metres from the Start line, Colin, Matt, Brendan, Dayle and Erik are already backwards!

then they finally decided that enough reversing is enough and get off to turn around and push. at which point the sledge accelerates and Erik, who has been pushing the back, falls over!

In a desparate attempt to gain speed Matt decides to pull the sledge down the hill

Better luck next time boys!

On the way home I was towed on a sledge behind brendan's, now working, scooter. which I have had a few opportunities to drive, which has been great fun. Unfortunately, whilst Brendan was returning from Barentsberg yesterday, he heard a loud clunk in the engine which instantly lost power, leaving him no option but to be towed home and facing the posibility of major engine work to be done. oh dear.

After a well deserved lie in on Sunday it was time to do something else fun, so off we went up Longyearbreen Glacier. passing the terminal moraine, old mining bits and pieces and lots of Polar fox tracks. I tried to go to football that night, but was thwarted by the giant bruise on my leg from last week, so am now more determined than ever to go swimming on tuesday and thursday mornings. I didn't make it last tuesday, but I did 60 lengths on thurday morning before my 9 o'clock, for which I was suitably proud of myself!

The only other news here is that there has been Two avalanches, one up on Longyearbreen glacier and one high up on the mountains on the opposite side of Adventfjorden, in which a guy on a snow mobile was buried under 2 metres of snow for 45 minutes. Unfortunately he died later in hospital. Although none of the students here new the person, there was a really subdued atmosphere around the barrack last night. After the safety course we were all so respectful of the dangers the environment here poses, but as time goes on and you become accustomed to your surrounding, you treat it with less respect. I think this accident has brought it home to everyone just how careful you really have to be around here.

sorry to end on such a depressing note.

thanks for reading

Ash