We Saw Our Ship!

After 2 days of traveling, I finally made it to Kirkenes! It is like a postcard, colorful houses and hills of rocky grey outcrops and bogs, leading down steep slopes into the sea. I met some of the other scientists and students on the plane ride here (some of us recognized each other from having seen the “Who’s Who” page on this blog), and we started comparing notes on what whether we brought steel-toed boots, should we bring extra water onboard, and whether we thought we were going to get seasick. Like most times when you meet people when you’re traveling, or when you’re on some kind of mutual experience, it becomes kind of like an “instant friend” situation. So a few of us decided to take a walk, and from the water’s edge where our ship was due to arrive in the next few hours, we compared notes on our backgrounds and fields of research (we had physical oceanography, atmospheric science, and ocean technician in our little group – not to mention me, the astronomer-turned-museum-curator).

As we continued our walk uphill, around this landscape that looks like it came out of a fairy tale, we came to a break in the trees, and one of looked toward the water. “Is that our ship?” And then the rest of us: “That’s our ship!” The pure excitement reminded me of kids on Christmas morning. The ship was quite literally arriving before our eyes.

As the ship slowly moved behind the trees, we rushed up the hill to get a better view from the top, and we see…