Walking where the whalers once worked, watching Erik being a polar bear, watching glaciers calve & passing the 80-th latitude, 2009-07-07.

This is a shore where the whalers dragged the dead whales ashore, cut them up and boiled the blubber.

Beautiful scenery.

Ernst and Erik really deserve to be called polar bears since they took a swim in the ice cold water!

True polar bears!

Glaciers all around!

Taking a boat ride and watching (and hearing) the glacier calve. So cool! The ice first makes a noise that resembles to the one to thunder, then a few moments later a big chunk of ice falls into the water.

Passing the 80-th latitude, that has to be celebrated with champagne!

Some more "evening sun"...

Embarking M/S Expedition and having a look at a russian village in the middle of Norway, aka Barentsburg, 2009-07-06.

Yes! Finally on board!

The oldest house in Barentsburg village.

You can't miss that this is a russian settlement. Everywhere you look, you are reminded.

The one and only café they have..

The village. No more, no less. It inhabits around 500 people and the single line of business is the coal mining.

The village is infested with this kind of kitschy, communist romantic, art.

Can you guess what the sign says? Yup, Barentsburg. Instead of the polar bears there should be miners, that would be more accurate!

Having some fun with all the silly hats they sold in the souvenir shop..

This one I really liked!

The miners had put up a show for all the tourists. It was hillarious!

M/S Expedition, and me.

Svalbard, the story. Arrival at Langyearbyen and midnight sun, 2009-07-05.

Oh, sun... It was the hottest day this summer when we arrived. 11 degrees Celsius..

Ingela and Ernst, Erik's parents.

Langyearbyen is situated on the 78-th latitude.

The whole lot, Hélène, Mikael, Erik, Ingela, Ernst and I, are having drinks in the sun and spotting raindeers in the meantime. Amazing!

Erik got his spare ribs just the way he likes them, big and a whole lot of them..

Midnight sun. If you take a close look in the middle of the picture you can se the watch pointing at midnight. It was crazy bright, just like daytime. A tad bit hard to go to sleep when it is like that..

Soaking up the midnight sun...

Summer, at its best!

I am so lucky that all this is just around my corner!