interest

I seem to be losing motivation for keeping this blog going. I might just start using it for picture updates whenever I take a trip. I'm not sure yet.

morocco and a crazy person

I think I'm going to try this trip in September or October, if I can find a reasonably priced flight. It should provide a nice contrast to the glacier, and I've been wanting to go on a camel caravan for a while. This trip doesn't quite involve a caravan, but there are camels.

On a different note, there was a crazyman on the train today. He looked like a scraggly, unkempt Norwegian in his 40s, possibly homeless. I didn't notice him until the train was pulling up to my stop. He was by the door, waiting for it to open, and holding a magazine curved in front of his face as if he were hiding from someone. He couldn't see anything, and as soon as the doors opened, he ducked out and headed to the right, instantly running into a woman. He's still holding the magazine in front of his face, so he didn't know which way to move to get out of her way, and she seemed confused. He reached out and felt where she was and where there were openings, and then moved around her.

He kept the magazine up and could probably see where his feet were, because he found his way to the exit ramp. He still couldn't see in front of him, though, and so ran into some guy there. The guy was kind of pissed, and yelled at him. He kept going, though, and last I saw of him, he had run into the back of a staircase and was feeling his way around it. Despite all that, he made good time getting out of the station.

night

Summer seems to be on it's way out already. It's 11:30 pm right now and it's almost completely dark outside. A couple of weeks ago at this time, it would just be about dusk now.

pics

Ok, the full set of glacier pictures can be found here.

A handful of video clips are here.

back

I'm back from Svalbard. It was cool. I have 800 pics or so to sort through and edit, so it'll take some time to post them. I'm also tired, so the description of the event will also come later.

In the meantime, here are a few select photos that probably best convey the highlights.

fourth

Here are pics from a July 4th celebration in Oslo.

North

I've been wanting to climb a glacier and kayak amongst icebergs for a while now. I had wanted to do it in Antarctica, but seeing as how I'm closer to the North Pole right now, I've decided to head to the northernmost extreme of Norway in late July. It's an island called Svalbard.

Here's some info.

Here's a map:


View Larger Map

And here's a description from the brochure of the 3-day camping trip I'll be on:

Day 1 (Friday)
After breakfast, at 7.30 am, you will be picked up by the guide at your choice of accommodation. After a short briefing, we will pack the personal safety equipment to bring along on the trip. The guide will take us to the harbour where the boat awaits, and we will head for Ymerbukta, where we will be set ashore at our camp by zodiacs. We settle in the camp and get ready for a kayaking trip. Dressed in dry suits and life vests, we will take place in our steady double kayaks and prepare for a trip along the shoreline to the Esmark Glacier front. Before start, the guide will teach us kayaking techniques and provide supervision. The kayak is the perfect vessel when our goal is to get really close to nature and experience the silence while looking for seals and sea birds. We will find a suitable spot to go ashore to have our lunch while enjoying the view of the glacier front. Back in camp after an active day, we will prepare our dinner, and if weather permits we will round off the day around the bonfire.

Day 2 (Saturday)
After a sound breakfast, we will pack the glacier equipment and head for the Esmark Glacier with its impressive front. Wearing crampons, harness, and ropes, we will hike onto the glacier. With supervision from the guide, we will hike on clear blue ice, over deep crevasses and snow bridges while linked together by rope. We will have our lunch on the glacier with a beautiful view over the mighty glacier formations and the inlet ahead. Back at the Camp, we will prepare our dinner while we let the impressions sink in. This is a relatively long day during which we will spend approximately 8 hours on the glacier. The hike from the camp to the glacier will last 40 minutes in easy terrain.

Day 3 (Sunday)
We will clear the camp and then take a hike in the surrounding areas before the boat picks us up to take us back to Longyearbyen via the Russian community Barentsburg. We will enjoy a hot lunch onboard, then get a guided tour of Barentsburg. We will also get to visit the museum before the boat sails back to Longyearbyen after an hour and a half in Barentsburg. Estimated arrival in Longyearbyen is 8 pm.

balloon

This is a picture of a horse balloon, taken at a 4th of July celebration in the park. I thought it noteworthy because the string appears to be tied to the horse in an unfortunate location.

pics and vids

Ok, here are pics and video clips from Cologne. If you want to download any of them, I think you need to join Flickr and add me as a friend or family member or something. Or I can just send you a copy.

coming soon

Got back from Cologne this weekend, and am working on editing the 300 pics and videos I took. Most of them are of a giant cathedral, which is the only structure I've seen so far in my life that I would label "majestic". I was awe-struck whenever I looked at it.

The rest of the pictures are of some underground Roman ruins lit by blue light, some night shots of the pub area and a bridge, and some dusk shots with a pretty sky. And there are two pictures of a waitress I had who is the biggest bitch in the world, and who would've ruined my day had the incident not been followed by the sudden appearance of a Hare Krishna parade (which is also the subject of several pictures).

psychogeography

I'm in Cologne, Germany, on bid'ness. As I talk with the people, I realize that the psychogeography in Europe -- the feeling of distance between two locations -- is much smaller than in the States. (I coined that term.) Europeans talk about going to Spain or Italy for the weekend like it's no big deal. Going a similar distance in the States, though, is seen as a relatively big undertaking. Cross-country travel in the U.S. is just a hassle and is something that people have to plan for; even going to a neighboring state for the weekend can seem like a big undertaking. Going from San Francisco to Las Vegas seems like a bigger trip to Americans than going from Rome to Madrid does to Europeans. There's a bigger psychological divide in our country's geography.

All this is probably due to the high-speed rail system in Europe, of course. It presents much less of a travel hassle than a plane flight covering the same territory.

On another, or perhaps similar, note, there's an intercountry soccer competition going on right now between the members of the European Union. Each country has its own soccer team, and the best teams play a single-elimination match against another country. The two countries left standing at the end play each other. It seems (and feels) like the Final Four in the U.S., but we're talking countries rather than states/schools.

weddings

Bachelorette parties in Norway are someone odd. The goal is to make the future bride do a bunch of embarrassing things all day. In the park the other day, such a party made her come over to us (strangers to her) and recite instructions on how to find and pick mushrooms. It was probably more embarrassing for her because most of us didn't know Norwegian and had no idea what she was saying.

Many of the party games seem to involve making a fool of yourself by saying something random to strangers or by doing something weird in front of passersby on the sidewalk. The parties are apparently pretty common, and the brides are easy to spot because her friends dress her up in clown clothes and such.

Below is a pic of the mushroom bride, talking to another group of strangers and then hanging out with her friends.

paintball wounds

On the ribs and forearms, sustained during a game today.

checks

Checks are obsolete in Norway. The banks don't have such accounts, and shopkeepers laugh if you suggest paying with one. You can't even pay rent or bills via check. Rather, you pay everyone online via your bank account, and the process is so normalized that all companies have a special ID number that you're supposed to use for the purpose; that number is included on all billing statements

Also, Norwegian banks have introduced a security measure that has somewhat replaced the PIN. When you sign up for an account, you receive a small electronic device, the size of a keychain fob. This device has a button and a small LCD screen; pushing the button produces a random 6-digit number on the display, and also transmits that number to some gatekeeping system. You enter that number when logging into your account or attempting to send money somewhere, and the gatekeeper checks to see if what you entered matches the number it received. Once used, the number is worthless, and you have to push the button for a new number for your next transaction. It took me a little bit to understand the system at first.

rabbit island

In Oslo's fjord are 3-4 small beach islands on which the Norwegians like to sun themselves during Summer. I haven't ferried to them yet, but they're supposed to be nice. One in particular has intrigued me, because it's supposed to be overrun with rabbits. From what I hear, people over the years would buy rabbits as pets, get tired of them, and then deposit them on this island.

It probably started a while ago with a couple of people planting a few rabbits there. Eventually, those rabbits found each other and produced offspring. Later visitors to the island saw some of those new rabbits bouncing around, decided they were cute, and so bought a rabbit or two as a pet. But then they got tired of the bunny, and so they abandoned it on rabbit island, where it would have friends. Soon, the island was brimming with them.

Sadly, I've learned recently that the gov'ment went and killed most or all of the bunnies. I'm not sure why, but I'm guessing the population had gotten too large to sustain itself. Either way, the island isn't as much of a draw for me, because I'm not all that interested in seeing a bunch of bleached rabbit skeletons dotting the beach.

daylight

The days are getting even longer. It's almost 11:30 pm now, and it's barely dusk outside. Even by 1:00 in the morning, it's not completely dark.

The extended sun is actually pretty cool, and it tricks your mind into fending off fatigue for a while. Makes me wonder whether people would be more productive if days were always this long.

movie trivia

In Norwegian, the wordplay in the chick movie "Made of Honor" doesn't really translate, so the name was changed to something that translates as either "A True Man" or "A True Husband".

brain

These are profiles and slices of my brain. I believe the last one just barely shows the corpus callosum in the middle, which connects the two halves of the brain. That's what doctors cut to treat really bad epilepsy. (That's just trivia, has nothing to do with me.)

bergen pics

Here they are. They're pretty amateurish, and I got to see only a couple of places in the city, so there's not a wide variety of quality shots. There are a few pics in the bunch that I really like, though.

bergen

I'm in Bergen today through Tuesday for a conference. Bergen is beautiful, and makes Oslo look like crap. Oslo wasn't really pretty before, but after seeing this town, I can say that it's downright unattractive. There was some great night scenery as I took a taxi to the hotel, so even though I got in at 11:30pm, I went out and took some pictures for about half an hour, mainly of the bay. And although I brought my computer with me, I didn't bring the little cord that connects it to my camera, so I can't post any of the results right now.

I took the train here, incidentally, because the airport staff are on strike. It's about a 6-7 hour ride, because Norway doesn't have any high-speed trains. I think the London-Paris bullet train covers the same distance in about an hour.

Click here for a google map of the trip between the two cities.