Adventures in the Snow

I know I have been a bad blogger! I have been feeling rather busy and stressed of late. Yes too stressed to even post on my blog. Strange but true. To make up for it I thought I would make a quick post showing some pics from recent adventures in the snow.

While we were in Tromso J and I both bought snowboards as a way to help us enjoy the winter. Unfortunately we did not have enough snow while up there to try them but since then we have hit the slopes every weekend at various places around Bergen.

It has been soooo much fun! Very painful at times, but really a fabulous experience and a great excuse to get out and see some amazing mountain landscapes.

Last weekend we went to the highest point between Bergen and Oslo called Finse (where they filmed the snow landscape in Star Wars: The Emperor Strikes Back).

We went for a friend's 30th birthday and while it is generally a flat place renowned for cross country skiing and kite skiing, we found a fabulous slope that we could hike up and snowboard down. We had some of the best conditions and best runs yet. It was really amazing. What was not so fun was our arrival on the first night. We got off the train in the dark at about 7pm and had to walk what we were told was about 2kms (actually turned out to be more like 4) on a path by the railway line to our hut. We were carrying backpacks full of food and wine and our snowboards, plus we had the dogs on leads. The Norwegians who had been there before lead the way and we headed off into the snow. Well, after trekking about 2 kms in what was knee deep snow at times the Norwegians began to get worried. The wind was picking up, we could still not see the hut, had never really found a path, and could not really see more than 20m in front of us. They decided we should turn back. Long story short, we got lost in blizzard like conditions for about 3 hours and had to be rescued by a man on a snow scooter. Our angel!

The snow scooter driver said it was too dangerous to drive us to our hut so we ended up renting another one closer to the train station. It was quite a dramatic beginning to the weekend! The next day dawned sunny though and we got some fabulous snow boarding so all was forgiven. We decided we liked Finse afterall. Here is me going up...

And me and J coming down...J is the one with style!



Anyway, hope you enjoy the pics from the snow and know that I leave for 4 weeks in Australia on Friday so this may be some of the last shots of snow for a while. No doubt J will keep waving the snowboarding flag for me!

Tromso Trip

After Christmas, J and I flew to Tromso in the far north of Norway to get a taste of what winter is like above the Arctic circle. We had an absolutely marvellous time and I wanted to share some stories and pics from the experience. Unfortunately the quality of the pics suffers from the lack of light available but hopefully they still give you some sense of the place nonetheless.

The first thing that surprised me was in fact the presence of any light at all. I had expected that having no sun would mean total darkness all day and night, but to my surprise and absolute delight, even though there was no sun, around midday there was a kind of twilight. This meant the sky went all the amazing colours that you normally see after the sun has gone down but it is not totally dark yet - purple, pink, orange blue etc. It was absolutely beautiful and really amazing to see and experience! Here is a pic of J sitting in a flat we rented looking out over the fjord and the city bathed in a sea of electric blue. This was a particularly surreal shade of light I thought, but so so beautiful!

Tromso as a city is actually situated on a small island in the middle of a fjord and surrounded by amazing, snow capped mountains. It is a very small city though so we tried to get out and do/see some other things in the surrounding areas while we were there. After the first night we went out to an island called Kvaloy (whale island) where we visited the Tromso wilderness centre and the biggest dog kennel in Norway - with over 220 Alaskan huskies! We had hoped to do some dog sledding there but unfortunately the unseasonal lack of snow on the lower grounds made that impossible, much to our disappointment! What we did do though was camp out the night on the property. This gave us the perfect opportunity to freeze our butts off, and more importantly, to scan the skies out of the city for the Northern Lights. After feeling ourselves going slightly mad trying to keep our eyes on all parts of the sky, around 11.30pm we were blessed with an amazing display of flourescent green bands of light dancing, disappearing and reappearing all over the sky. At one point, they emerged from behind a mountain and turned the whole mountain top green! It was totally amazing! Unfortunately I have no pics of this. I made one small attempt to take a photo, discovered you needed to know much more about camera settings etc than I do, and decided not to miss the display by trying to capture it through a lens. The mental photographs will stay with me forever though! Here is a picture of our camp for you instead!

Also, here is us killing time taking photos of ourselves while we waited for the lights! It was so funny, J commented at one point that it was not actually that cold, but then we counted the layers of clothing we had on, I think I had seven! The wilderness centre lent us snow suits and we were most grateful for them!

After our night in the tent, we were served a wonderful breakfast in a lavvo, sami style accommodation. It was really 'koselig' with the fire and the reindeer skins after the chilly night in the tent, just a shame that the pics do not accurately capture the warm orange light and campfire smell we got to dine with!

As we could not go dog sledding as planned, the centre let us help feed the dogs after our breakfast. We were put on puppy duty and got to feed all the young dogs their mix of whale and chicken meat....mmmm delicious! They are really serious about their sledding at this place, and the owners completed the alaskan iditarod race last year (over 1000 miles!), which was really amazing to hear all about! The amount of dogs at this place was totally amazing and the view almost even more so!

After feeding the hounds we took some of them for a walk in the mountains, made a fire and grilled some sausages on a stick, the Norwegian way. One of the dogs killed a lemming and even though it was dead, I was very excited to see my very first lemming! Apparently it was a good season for lemmings this year, which ironically means a bad season for lemmings, if you know what I mean?

After visiting the wilderness centre and their dogs, we headed back into Tromso for New Years. In line with Norway's highly exorbitant prices, we paid almost $100 for a bottle of red with our dinner but it was almost worth it when our waitress told us the northern lights wer eon display outside. Even though we were in the city, this second display we saw of the lights was even more amazing than the first, with huge intense dancing beams spanning from horizon to horizon. The earth was putting on its own display of fireworks! After dinner we hit one of the recommended pubs for our big night out. At first we thought we would be home in bed by 10pm - the whole city seemed completely dead! Most places were closed and what was open had no more than a couple of tourists in it. Quite unexpectedly, we hooked up with a couple of other Australians who had chosen the Blue Rock pub for their night out and got on so well with them that before we knew it it was time to run out and watch the fireworks! This was the last year Norway was allowing the public sale of fireworks so the people had gone completely crazy. Even though there was an official display going off on one of the mountains, we were totally surrounded by fireworks right in the city and even had to dodge the odd one or two! After the display we went back into the pub and discovered that the Norwegians had just been waiting to watch the fireworks before they went out. The place was packed and the rest of the night disappeared into a kind of blur! All I know is that it ended at 5am when J and I found ourselves on a Norwegian fishing trawler discussing the state of cod stocks. Crazy night! And we both got the hang overs to prove it! In fact, all the next day we hung in our hotel room watching crap television and ordering room service. The only time we left our room was to buy a kebab. Now that is hung over!

After New Years we decided to pursue our desire for dog sledding a little further afield, and we booked a trip to Tamokdalen about an hour and a half inland from Tromso, where there was snow on the ground and the promise of mushing! Here is a photo through the bus window on our way out there. I can understand why so many landscape artists go to Tromso.

Here we finally got to try dog sledding, and in fact, J got to drive our sled for 20kms through some very rough terrain. It was absolutely amazing! We travelled through a gorgeous valley, crossed frozen rivers, (that actually weren't always entirely frozen and I thought I was going in at one stage!), tripped through frosty forests and hammered up and down hills with our little furry companions. We followed a guide the whole way but it never really felt safe to be honest with you (in fact, the other english couple that did it with us stacked their sled twice). This only made it more exhilarating though and J might have actually missed his calling because he was an excellent musher!

We also saw some amazing things along the way like huge wolverine tracks in the snow with paws as big as a mans hand, a massive king eagle bigger than any wedge tail I have ever seen, and a little frosty otter skipping across an icy waterway! It was truly wild country out there and it totally took my breath away.

While we were up in Tromso I also gave a talk at a research institute for gene ecology but that experience paled in comparison to seeing the spectacular green of the Northern lights dance across the sky and speeding on a dog sled through a snow covered landscape shrouded in pink light! It was a truly unforgettable trip and we hope to venture back up there again in summer to experience the same landscape under the magnificence of the midnight sun. xxx

Christmas in Bergen

This post is a little late, but I wanted to post some pics from our Christmas in Norway...better late than never you know! It is also going to be a little short in the description department unfortunately because I am nursing the horrid combination of an intense New Years day hangover and the flu...hmmmm...tasty combination!

So...Christmas. Unfortunately we did not get the white Christmas we had been hoping for, but we did get a traditional Bergen Christmas with rain, which was nice! The good thing about the rain was that I got to wear my big red gumboots with cream sock trims - very Mrs Claus!




The weekend before Christmas, J and I decided that we really needed a tree and some decorations to help make us feel like it was Christmas. I had bought a couple of pretty little wooden decorations when we were in Prague for my Mum to paint and decorate, but when she passed away I brought them back to Bergen with me. I coloured them in with my crayons, hung them on a dead branch with some green moss and silver ribbon and voila...a tree..of sorts!

Together with a red and green paper chain, some presents and some wonderful drawings from my beautiful nieces Charlotte and Rose, we had a real little Christmas corner happening!

We had Christmas lunch with my boss and his family and friends at his place, and that was lovely. Although, it must be said, their tree was a little more specatacular than ours! The best part of the Norwegian Christmas tradition was after lunch when the family all held hands and danced around the Christmas tree singing carols (in Norwegian of course!) It was just a lovely little bonding moment and a tradition that J and I think we would like to start in our family...although we may sing in English I think!

Because the Norwegians celebrate on the 24th, we got home around midnight and opened all our own presents at home and tried to talk to our families on skype. It was a different Christmas, and missing one very special person, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. I hope everyone else had a wonderful day and I promise to blog soon about our New Years holiday in Tromso! xxx

Third Floor - Knitting Room

Here we are - the third and final floor. Well actually, after the knitting room is the sewing room but since it was being restored, the knitting room is the final room on the tour.

This is where all kinds of crazy machines, of varying shapes and sizes, turned the spun wool into webs of woven wonder. So exciting!

One thing that really surprised me was all the machines knitting in rounds. Of course up in the sewing room they would just cut the pieces and make whatever they wanted, but I was surprised that so much of it started in circles.

It was also amazing to see that each machine was knitting in different patterns. Some, such as this one, typically Norwegian in style.

The colours were especially lovely in the area where they knitted lots of small details and trims...so pretty!

The most astounding machine for me though, was the sock knitter. It knitted pairs end to end and spat them into a collecting tube. So funny! So clever! Seeing those socks just streaming into the tube, a new one every minute or so, really made me look industrialisation in the face. Kind of entrancing really...

So I hope you have enjoyed your tour of the Salhus knitting museum. The next post will be all about Christmas in Norway. Wishing everyone and their families a very Merry Festivus ;) Eat, drink, eat some more, drink some more, snooze in the afternoon and be merry! Loves of Love and Special Christmas Kisses...

Second floor - the spinning room

Moving on to the second floor...the superbly splendiferous spinning room! Mmmmmm...

This is where women, and children entered the production process. The women operated the machines and the kids ran the errands :)

First the wool was spun from the big bobbins downstairs onto more manageably sized cones.

While the enormity of some of the machines spinning the thread from the bobbins to cones was truly astounding, the view from the window was not bad either!

As you can see, a lovely light pink shade at about 2:30 in the afternoon...

This is also where they got to do cool things like spin different colours into one thread, so we can all make cool things like gorgeous speckly socks! Yay!

Next time I will spin us from here up to the knitting room....wooohooooo.....

Salhus Knitting Museum, Tour of the Bottom Floor

Well winter is well and truly here.

Darkness has set in and I know this because I have had to buy a 'dawn simulator' alarm clock, which wakes me by slowing lighting my room with all the power of an artificial sun. The cold, dark, long, lonely nights (okay not so lonely given the delightful presence of J and the hounds!) have reawakened my desire to deck myself in wool and wile away the hours click click clicking on some knitting needles. And yes Dr Kylie, the first thing I decided to knit was my very first sock!

A lovely Spanish girl and fellow GM crop researcher and activist who is currently visiting my research centre for 3 months, Miss Rosa, kindly offered to be my guide. She is in the process of knitting socks and many other wonderful things herself. In honour of the birth of my first sock, on sunday we decided to celebrate in style and visit an old knitting factory on a fjord in Salhus - about half an hour bus ride out of Bergen.

So glad we did! Very interesting! And surprisingly beautiful! For someone who had never visited a textile factory before, it was completely fascinating! I was intrigued by the cold metal of the machine against the soft supple touch of the wool. I was fascinated by the complexity of the whole process from sheep to sweater. I was amazed by the scale of the operation. I was amazed by the speed of the operation. Humbled in my own little struggle to create a single baby sock. Pondering the difference between mechanical precision and the art of the handicraft.

In this first installment, I send you some pics from the bottom floor. The start of the factory process. ..The 'men's work' floor, where the wool was combed and spun onto massive bobbins.

In it goes...

The combing cogs in natural colour

The machine that places the wool on the arm length bobbins...

Like I said, the boys floor of the factory...

Next time...I will take you to the spinning room - are you excited yet?? xxx

QnA

1. Name one person who made you laugh last night.

Dr Seuss
2. What were you doing at 0800?

Sleeping while snow fell all around the house

3. What were you doing 30 minutes ago?

Norwegian homework

4. What happened to you in 2006?

Got my PhD...woohoo, Mum got sick...boohoo

5. What was the last thing you said out loud?

Is that okay on your legs?

6. How many beverages did you have today?

Crickey, could be too many to count...5 hot ones at least...

7. What color is your hairbrush?

Don't own one and can't remember the last time I used one...must have been when I was burdened with long hair...hehehe

8. What was the last thing you paid for?

Milk, lollies and a DVD (The Last King of Scotland) from the local servo

9. Where were you last night?
Snuggled up at home with a fire burning

10. What color is your front door?

Boring Brown wood baby

11. Where do you keep your change?

In a little ceramic pot on the shelves inside the front door

12. Whats the weather like today?

Around zero, snow, and blustery blizzard like winds

13. What's the best ice-cream flavor?

All fruity ones are good - strawberry, banana, boysenberry, raspberry, lemon etc etc etc

14. What excites you?

Visiting new places and climbing into bed at night

15. Do you want to cut your hair?
Big time! I miss my Carly....

16. Are you over the age of 25?
Yes but who's counting really?!

17. Do you talk a lot?

Mmmm...sometimes.

18. Do you watch the O.C?

Fraid not.

19. Do you know anyone named Steven?

Yep, I know a few of them. Does it count if they spell it with a ph?

20. Do you make up your own words?
Stephen with a ph is not a made up word!

21. Are you a jealous person.

I try not to be

22. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter 'A'.

Ana

23. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter 'K'.

Karl Arne

24. Who's the first person on your received call list?

My Dad, god love him

25. What does the last text message you received say?

Yep, I think so.

26. Do you chew on your straw?

Mmmm...sometimes

27. Do you have curly hair?

Oh how I wish! always been a dream...

28. Where's the next place you're going to?

Apart from work on Monday, yesterday I booked a trip to Tromso for new years, almost 400kms north of the Arctic circle...dog sledding and ice fishing here we come!

29. Who's the rudest person in your life?

That is a bit hard to answer on a public blog!

30. What was the last thing you ate?

Lollies from the local servo

31. Will you get married in the future?

Not likely

32. What's the best movie you've seen in the past 2 weeks?

Babel - was surprisingly good.

33. Is there anyone you like right now?

This little hound with his heavy head on my lap is kind of okay!

34. When was the last time you did the dishes?

Me personally? Day before yesterday maybe? I have a good house husband!

35. Are you currently depressed?

Not this minute

36. Did you cry today?

Not yet

37. Why did you answer and post this?

Because I do not have any particularly exciting news to report and enjoyed reading Kylie's answers on her blog :)

Words

Tell me of a sunset.
Sing me a waterfall.
Teach me the words of the wind!
My child, I'm so sorry,
I can do none of these things.

Play me the sound of a fire in full flight.
Show me the sight of stars without night.
Teach me to fly and how to grow wings!
My child, I am sure, I can do none of these things.

Show me the sound of an avalanche breaking,
Tell me the feeling of a child in the making.
Sing me the sense of sun on my skin!
My child, I know I can do none of these things.

Then teach me to laugh without making a sound.
Tell me the feeling of being wrapped in goose down.
Describe to me the smell of a rose.
My child, this would be like showing you the emperor’s new clothes.

There is only one way to know of such things.
Only one way to feel all that life brings.
You must live with both your eyes and your mind,
Opening your heart to all that you find.

You must be aware and alert and in awe,
Prepared to embrace all that life has in store.
It is a magical world we are blessed to live in.
Take your time to remember,
Breathe out and breathe in.

White Weekend

Hei! As you can see, we had some snow this weekend!
It has been wonderful to see the world turn white again. I have also been studiously observing the many different forms snow can take and can now understand just why it is that the eskimos have so many words for it. There can be anything from large fat floaty flakes to tiny hard hailstone like kugler, (sorry, Norwegian taking over, I mean balls) ... and of course everything in between. Now I know that people who live in areas where it snows regularly will already know all about this, but for me it has been an interesting learning curve! I am also learning about where it is safe to walk on snow and ice covered roads...a sometimes painful learning experience :)

J and I really are like kids when it snows, we get so excited! And just have to keep telling each other about it - it is really falling now, check out the size of those flakes, wow it is thick on the ground, don't the trees look pretty, etc etc etc. The dogs also love it though. They have spent lots of time this weekend rolling around making their own little snow angels in the backyard. Then they get the sillies and run around in circles like mad dogs before falling down and rolling around again. So cute.

Everything just looked so beautiful that I decided to take my camera out on my usual walk with the dogs and snap some photos of the neighbourhood. I hope you enjoy them...

This is a photo of the mountain called Ulriken, bathed in a fabulous moment of sun!

Looking across the park to Ulriken, yes that is a snowman and a grown man on a sled in the foreground - real winter fun I tell you!

One of the paths around the park...

Looking from said path back across the park to Lovstakken - the mountain we see from our backyard.

Now I also know that I promised you some pics of my beloved Kombi, so here they are...isn't she a beauty?!

Not so easy to ride in the snow though!

Wait a minute...look at me go! xxx

Autumn in Aarhus

Okay so I have been convinced to continue! Thanks! But I have also been convinced that the blog does not have to be about other people and readers, that it has value to me as documentation of my travel and as an exercise in writing. So here goes....

J and I were fortunate enough to get a long weekend in Aarhus Denmark last weekend. I travelled there courtsey of the uni to attend a workshop on toxicological and environmental aspects of nanotechnology. Yippee. J travelled there courtsey of frequent flyer points. Double Yippee.

It was great to have J along for company in the evenings, especially as it helped me avoid spending an excessive number of hours in the company of members of the NanoEthics Network - not that they weren't nice or anything, most of them were, but after hanging with them all day at the workshop, 2 conference dinners seemed excessive! And besides, they were not exactly the people I wanted to share the hotel spa and sauna with, if you know what I mean!

The bad thing about having J with me though was of course that he got to go out and be a tourist in the city while I sat and stared out the windows of the workshop! That means that he got lots of fabulous photos of the old city part of Aarhus while I could only snap those parts of the university grounds that I got to see during a 40minute lunch break! It was such spectacular autumn weather though that I hope some of the colours make up for the lack of location diversity! The uni was in a nice area of town, about 40minutes walk from the city centre. For those of you who don't know already Aarhus is the second largest city in Denmark and a port town...but as I said, you will not be seeing photos of any of this below, just some lovely autumn pics from around the uni campus!




It is really lovely to be watching the seasons change so dramatically, and today marked an extra special moment - the first day of autumn that I left the house for work and saw snow on the mountains. So beautiful! Sadly this may also indicate the slow decline of my bicycling to work - peddling home in the dark and the snow sounds far more desirable than it actually is! Especially when you are battling the constant threat of being blown off your bike and copping the tyre wash of every passing car and truck! Hmmm...we'll see how things go. Hopefully I can post pics of my beloved Kombi bike next time. xxx