I was very disappointed when I checked the time of departure
of the first leg of my flight Bergen-Oslo-Tromsø. I was under the impression
that it was at mid afternoon, but no, the flight departed at 13:30 pm, which
meant I had to leave Bergen
at 11:30 am at the latest. This completely screwed up my plans for museum
visits, since all museums open at 11:00 am. Instead I used the morning to
meander through the university grounds, with the campus smoothly merging with
the town in a very European style. It was 8 am when I was there, so I got a
chance to see many students walking briskly to their respective schools,
muffled against the chill of the morning.
By 11 am I was back at my hotel to pick up my backpack, and
45 minutes later the tram brought me to the airport. Norwegians are not as
uptight regarding flight security as we are, and although you go through a full
x-ray screening nobody peers closely at your passport picture as if trying to
decide if it is you or a fake of you who want to board the plane. Finished with
all formalities I still had an hour to wait, so I took a nice nap.
Speaking about naps, I have been going to bed at 8 pm, and
have been waking at 6:30 am, which for me is a lot of sleep. Yet, because of my
congested nose and sinuses (plus the always present sleep apnea) I have been
sleeping poorly, with lost of bizarre dreams, so I am not fully rested. This
means that as soon as I sit down for a moment I fall immediately asleep! I have
now learned to set an alarm in my cell phone, so I will not risk missing a
flight, and having done so I through myself gleefully into nap mode. Needless
to say I slept through the 50 minute flight from Bergen
to Oslo , and during the 4 hour flight from Oslo to Tromsø.
I don’t think I have mentioned that Tromsø is way north
along the coast of Norway ,
just north of the Arctic Circle . I have come
this far to visit with my niece Ceci, her husband Greg, and their little boy
Evan. They are here because Ceci got a Fulbright Fellowship to come do research
at the Polar Research Institute here in Tromsø, and I am here because they are
here and someone had to come visit them.
As soon as I arrived I walked out into Arctic conditions to
wait at the curb, and two minutes later the whole family drove by and picked me
up. They have the use of the car of one of their friends this week, for which I
am very glad.
Once we got to their comfortable house we shed all the
winter boots and heavy coats, and there were embraces and happy hugs all
around. Evan will be 2 years old next week, so he is a small bundle of energy
that happily climbs over the furniture and shoots “goles” with remarkable
precision with his soccer ball.
We had a yummy dinner of salad and pasta with pølsen, and
then caught up on family news over a steaming mug of coffee. Afterward Evan had
to take his bad and go to sleep, and I took the opportunity to go out for a
walk in search of the northern lights. And I got to see them! (or at least I
think I did). Unfortunately everyone has their outdoor lights blazing, and the
nearby stadium keeps its big lights on for the best part of the night, but
after climbing the hill that is behind the house I got to a dark spot, and after
staring intently at a patch of black sky I could see ghostly bands of light
forming shreds across the sky. At first I thought I was just looking at thin
clouds, but after staring at it for a while the shreds of light coalesced into
bands, and the bands starting undulating, just to suddenly disappear. I have
three more days to complete my observations, but the start was really
auspicious.
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