Changes in Latitudes

At the end of August, we bid on a house and "won" it after only being inside for all of 5 minutes. In reality, we probably paid mainly for the location, but we truly have the best spot in Bergen (in our opinion). The house was built in 1923 and needs a bit of love, but we have decided to take on little-by-little. While Marius was preparing the apartment for sale, I took on the first project myself. Our foyer was a nice shade of yellow, but I painted it white. I finally figured out why Scandinavians paint their interiors white.. With so little daylight in the winters, it is necessary to have the indoors be as bright as possible to combat the long dark days from November to March. [The previous yellow color of the foyer around the light switches, and the new white color] We've also started freshening up the living room. Before it was a shade of beige, and now it will be...white. I touched up the kitchen by getting rid of the flower wallpaper and painting it white...

This past weekend we revisited Iceland three years after my first visit. This time the reason was to visit Katrine who has been studying there this month. I really enjoy the relaxed vibe of Reykjavik. No one is in a hurry, and it's very quiet considering it is the largest city in Iceland. We got in very late on Friday night - rented a car and drove it to our AirBnB. We finally got to bed at 2:30AM local time (4:30AM Norwegian time), and had 6 hours to sleep before we were expected to be at Katrine's place for breakfast. When our alarms went off we threw on our hiking clothes and packed our bags for our daytrip. We were greeted with a great breakfast (including Skyr!! - Icelandic style yoghurt - my favorite). [Natural skyr with warmed up (frozen) berries] [I love breakfast] Saturday's itinerary was the Golden Circle. Without stopping it takes a little over three hours to drive the route. We started around 10 and got back by 6-ish. The highlights of the driv...

A last minute decision to run the Bergen famous Stoltzekleiven Opp... An email was sent around to the Institute asking if anyone else wanted to join Team Fisken ("the Fish") and run the Stoltzen Opp since they had some left over spaces available. I decided 'why not', and went for it.  I did not properly prepare for the race, in my opinion. After a busy summer I crammed in training for the Fjord Viking and then was sent on a survey for two weeks in the Barents Sea. The best way I could think of training up for Stoltzen was doing some hard spinning for half an hour. I ended up doing three 10-minute intervals at least every other day. I hopped on the bus Friday morning 50 minutes before race start not knowing who the guy I was supposed to get my bib from. I got off the bus and had to book it uphill to Fjellveien and then run to the start - I figured it was a nice 20 minute warm up. I was taking this race waaaayy too lightly since I had very low expectations of...

With the 6-on-6-off shifts, it's hard to remember how many days have passed and which day of the week it is, but I think it was the day before yesterday when I finally got some sunshine and saw some whales and dolphins! We have had cloudy skies the whole survey period except for this one day. Meanwhile, in Bergen, record high temperatures have been set all week as one last week of summer visited the city that also set records in July for the rainiest July on record. This particular day we finally had some bits of sun. Mostly cloudy, however, I saw a chance to put on my winter coveralls and sit outside for a few minutes. I saw a few fin whales in the distance, likely feasting on krill. I only saw the plume of mist when they surfaced. On the opposite end of the boat a small pod of dolphins was getting closer. One got close enough that I thought the picture would turn out way better than it did. Still need to share. It was the best day at sea! We only have five more sampli...

[2:50AM in the middle of the Barents Sea] This survey is very different from the others I have been on...that being said, of the three surveys I have been on have all been the annual summer mackerel/ecosystem survey. We sample at different depths, which results in a few more species than the summer survey; as deep as 200 m below the surface. A vast majority of what we have gotten is young cod (less than a year old; we call them 0-group). We also get lots of jellyfish.  This survey is also more exhausting. The stations are closer together, and if they see something interesting on the echosounder they set out the trawl. In our 6 hour shift we can get up to three hauls. It doesn't necessarily make the time go by faster when there's lots of sorting. Most of the hauls have only 4 or 5 different species and they are all around 3 inches long. I still haven't seen a whale, but there is currently a rough-legged hawk (fjellvåk) hanging out on top of one of the masts l...

[Master of train travel] Tuesday morning was an early start for the Diaz-Engebrethsen household. Marius had to catch a plane to Stavanger and then drive a little to a place called Lysebotn for work. Pancho and I took an early walk, and now that it's September the amount of daylight is decreasing significantly. We got back, grabbed my stuff, and caught the bus to the train station. We took the train to Oslo from Bergen - a trip lasting around 7 hours. Pancho is a master of train travel. He gets excited to see other dogs, and there was a female around his age just in front of us, but eventually he gave up with trying to say hi and took a nap. I was really proud to see how relaxed he was on the train compared to the other dog who was obviously a bit stressed. We got off the train and Rigmor picked us up. While I'm gone our friends Morten and Katrine are taking care of Pancho. That night (Tuesday night), I found out that a passport is needed to fly to Svalbard. I was total...