Arrival at 78°

Hi folks, Simon here. I wrote the first few lines as I arrived pretty early, on Wednesday the 3^rd of January 2018, tired and exhausted after a three days journey to the North.

The first person to meet was Nina at the UNIS reception. A feisty and cheerful human being, screaming out loud “YAAAY you’re our first student this semester, welcome” and in next to no time I was equipped with my student card, reflectors and plenty of information my tired brain couldn’t really grasp. Off I was into the dark, cold “day” with no proper clothing yet – the temperature was at -19° C with quite strong winds – up the slippery road to the shops.

My very first impression was that the snow feels different. I’ve never experienced snow so dry. Almost like sand. Indeed, when it is blown over the surface the sound is quite familiar. I listened to it for quite a while, touching it, forgetting about the freezing cold.

The day is pitch black, although you can see a slight dimmer to the south already on the horizon around lunchtime. It is a strange feeling. It was 14:00 o’clock and I couldn’t tell if it was ‘day’ or ‘night’, except for the clocks that keep you having something you could relate to a daily routine.

First, I started looking for food at the supermarket. Inside the "Svalbardbutikken" there is an alcohol shop where I happened to capture the words “plane ticket” at the entrance and that aroused my interest (I had thrown those away a couple of minutes before). So, I ended up in a conversation with the vendor/controller/supervising authority behind his desk. He explained to me that I would get an alcohol card, as there are limits on how much alcohol you can buy on Svalbard. For example, this card allows you to buy 24 beers and 2 liters of spirits per month. That quite amused me and I was wondering why this might be? I guessed mainly to limit alcoholism. Sure it was once related to that as he started telling me the story about the time of the miners. Those men drank beer and spirits, their bosses wine and that is why there is a cap on beer/spirits, but not on wine.

Not tragic, I prefer wine anyway.

But my goodness, a bottle of wine at the same price of a bottle of vodka?! Something is wrong here! As well with the groceries, oh my god, those prices… This is madness! Is this Switzerland? I just spent Christmas back home and it ruined me. I won’t survive another five months like this. I started imagining living off bread and pasta hereafter…

But no, not this day. Nina told me that at the “Svalbar” you can have pizza and beer. Yummy, I was curious to see if they’re capable of producing a decent pizza or if I had to expect something like the ones in Oban… No, that wasn’t the case. They’re good, but imagine a beer and a pizza for 235 NOK, which is approximately £23 (at that time I didn’t know about the student discount yet).

So, in this bar I see a guy sitting there with his green ski trousers and I recalled that he was on the same flight, maybe a fellow student? It turned out that Oli was a Spanish-Italian language student from Durham University and he flew up to Svalbard for just two days before heading to Tromsø. He wanted to go to the Arctic seeing something different rather than participating in a boring skiing holiday. He was roaming up and down the town within the safe zone and had planned to go up the water tower at mine 2a to the East to set up his camera and take some decent pictures from above. But to his disappointment, his Airbnb host told him not to do so. I quote: “You go up there, no longer than 1 minute, then you go back or you get eaten by a polar bear. Polar bears are sneaky, and hungry at this time of year!” That is when I realised properly for the first time, oh wow, they’re here, I’m living in their territory now and shouldn’t probably be walking around this careless after all.

The dark is still here and I’m starting to lose the feeling for a day’s length. The cold is getting worse. It creeps into every one of my bones. I shiver homewards wondering what this place might have in store for me.