On New Year's Eve, after our polar bear swim (fortunately polar bear-free -- the night before I'd had nightmares/involuntary violent fantasies in which I was dismembered by a hungry polar bear displaced by global warming) and meal of whale flesh, Brandon and I walked across the bridge to Tromsdalen, where we took a cable car up to the top of the first swell of a line of snow-covered mountains. We arrived unfashionably early and spent several hours walking along the mountains, which glittered in the light of the full moon. At one point, Brandon turned to me and said, "Irene! Do you hear the silence?" Which should give you an idea of how heaven-like the landscape we were exploring was. Here is a picture of that landscape:
(Notice that the snow ACTIVELY SPARKLES. That's no passive reflection you see going on there. This snow is ALIVE.)
Towards midnight, we headed back to the cable car building to watch the fireworks in Tromsø from above, feeling much like Zeus and his cohorts on Mount Olympus, but before the show we caught a wee glimpse of the Northern Lights, pointed out by a very friendly Irish or Scottish (Brandon and I disagreed about this) couple. It was more like one very faint light smeared out, tinting the grayish sky a little bit lighter gray. Disappointing, to say the least, but we of indomitable good cheer and optimism recover quickly from such letdowns. After cursing and loudly disbelieving our bad luck, we went to watch the night's main spectacle, which did not disappoint at all. This is what Tromsø looks like from above:
Now imagine it sizzling and popping with fireworks. You have to imagine it because my camera ran out of batteries long before the stroke of midnight, but maybe it's better that way. It was beautiful! There were fireworks up on the mountain, too, and we were surrounded by children with sparklers and other Things On Fire, so we started the New Year with a dazzling display of light. I hope that this means that the whole year will a dazzling display of light -- you know, metaphorically. I am always up for being dazzled.
Brandon left on the 2nd (sob), and that afternoon I met up with Tim and Ruben, who had written to me via CouchSurfing and asked me to show them around town. We went to the Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum and the Perspektivet Museum, which both had excellent exhibitions, and then we walked around town, which was already starting to come back to life after the holidays. The next day was more eventful -- both Tim and Ruben swam in the icy sea under my inexpert supervision (they joked about weak hearts and having just one lung while I played out about a hundred worst case scenarios in my head) and survived.
After getting on the warm bus to head home, we decided to go on the cheap tour of Tromsø and the surrounding area, i.e. we rode a bus for about an hour and a half as it looped to the northern end of the island, back through the center and over the bridge into Tromsdalen, and finally close to the apartment where I'm staying. The bus driver, a tattooed ex-seaman, eyed us skeptically at first, but towards the end of our tour opened up and even boasted that he had never once in his thirteen years as a bus driver scratched the side of the bus while passing through a bridge that was only eighteen centimeters wider than the bus (we had commented on the narrowness of this bridge the first time we passed through it; the second time I was mentally cheering for the bus driver and dreading even more the day when I will have to get my driver's license).
Tim, Ruben and I ate, watched "Pulp Fiction" (I ran to the kitchen whenever somebody pulled out a gun, and read in the staircase during the most violent scene), and then I almost forcibly ejected them from the apartment, overwhelmed by an inexplicable flood of antisocial feelings. It was really very rude of me -- I lost major Social Interaction Points -- but they were kind enough to overlook it and invite me to eat with them at their hotel yesterday evening, which I did.
Today was a successful day, even on the social interaction front. After sleeping a few hours -- insomnia, which I will get to shortly -- I showered and headed to the library, which still holds Wonder of the World status in my book. I read half of a book of poetry by Stephen Dobyns, whose poem "Tomatoes" I really like, and made zero friends. However, I did manage to locate the Tromsø offices of Save the Children and Amnesty International, reconnected with Kine, a woman I met at the Christmas Eve volunteer dinner, and gave both her and the sole AI employee my e-mail address and a smile that meant, "Thank you so much for letting me have tea with you and telling me how to volunteer with your organization! You have no idea what this is doing for my state of mind! I am so happy that I'm smiling!" But they probably just thought I was being polite or, likelier still, a weirdo.
It's good that I'll be volunteering with these two organizations because I just found out that I'm not allowed to take university courses (against the Watson philosophy!), which was one sure-fire way that I was planning to meet people. I will be attending one lecture class on Sami culture and history, because they're here and I'm here and it seems silly not to, but that's it for academic structure in my life. In response to this sudden change of plans, I spent about two hours feverishly planning excursions to other cities (while a tiny voice inside my head reminded me, "Budget! Budget! Budget!"), and have decided to go to:
- Jokkmokk, Sweden for the first week of February to attend the Sami winter market.
- Karasjok, the Sami capital of Norway, shortly thereafter.
- Svalbard in mid-March to witness the sun festival.
!!!
The sun makes its first appearance here in just a few weeks, and I have to say that it is coming none too soon. Yes, people leave their houses, walk around town, and even ski in the dark, but it's just not the same as having a few hours of real daylight during which you WANT to go outside. Residential streets are quiet as graves -- you hope that there are living humans inside all of those brightly lit houses, but there's no way to know. They might all have disappeared! So: the darkness turns an otherwise pleasant city into a playground for existential fears.
Also, I've been having quite a bit of trouble sleeping. At night I lie in my bed, staring out into the dark, for hours, and it seems that as soon as I fall asleep my alarm clock starts beeping wildly at me. I set it for 9:01 in the morning so that I can be ready to leave the house shortly after 10:00 and take advantage of the twilight hours, and I've started using the large sunlamp in Brynjulv and Ellen's living room to simulate morning before that. It's wearing me down, though. I've been moody and sad, and I'm eating like a moody and sad person does, and my interactions with the outside world are moody and sad unless I make an effort to look less moody and sad. IT IS ALL THE SUN'S FAULT. But I'll forgive it as soon as it comes back in T-minus 16 days.
Now I'm going to go for a walk -- perhaps I will buy an overpriced tea at a cafe and try to chat someone up. PERHAPS I WILL SEE THE NORTHERN LIGHTS. I obsessively check this site, but so far it has done nothing but give me false hope. PERHAPS MY HOPE WON'T BE FALSE TONIGHT.
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