As mentioned earlier, we spent the second half of the week-long autumn vacation in Tromsø. We are slightly strange, we, when it starts turning darker and colder we travel north on vacation…but then again we had relatives to visit – my girlfriend’s brother lives up there with his family. For the geographically challenged I can mention that Tromsø is situated quite far north in Norway, almost at 70° north, at about the same level as Godhavn (Qeqertarssuaq) on Greenland and somewhat farther north than Point Hope in Alaska (the most northern point of Sweden is about 69° north). Despite that fact it doesn’t feel that far way, the flight from Oslo takes just below two hours, about the same time as a trip to Helsinki or London.

Since Tromsø is locate north of the arctic circle, the sun sets once in the autumn and doesn’ rise again until a couple of months later. Unfortunately we arrived a couple of weeks too early to experience the dark time, so it was actually light as late as about four in the afternoon now, although it was quite noticeable that the darkness is just a few weeks off. However, something that was more of a disappointment was the fact the winter hadn’t arrived yet, the first days had rain and temperatures above freezing, even though it improved a bit and froze slightly on the Sunday. There was no snow except than on the mountain tops.

I find it very beautiful when the terrain is hilly and with the high mountains that surround the town, especially considering I grew up in a small village that more or less is situated out in the flat fields. When I was young I had to walk quite a bit out into the forest to find a hill steep enough to sled down, and not even that one was particularly steep (and, to make it even better, it went straight down into a ditch).

It was, as I mentioned earlier, the first time I met with my girlfriend’s brother and his family. It was a bit nerve-racking to start with, but it went just fine. On the Sunday we all took the obligatory Sunday walk around Lake Prestvatn, where I took quite a lot of photos – it is nice to have a digital camera, even though I realize that I should upgrade to a new one, to get more pixels into my pictures. We didn’t do quite as much shopping as we did in Stockholm, but at least I found a pair of warm winter boots at a reasonable price. It’s just fitting that I found them after travelling north, even though they were manufactured in South Korea.

Tromsø is a place that I would be happy to return to, but I think that next time will have to be in the summer. And also not when I had a cold like I did now, I can definitely not recommend flying with a stopped up nose (my ears hurt quite a lot when I had problems equalising the pressure). Oh, well. I survived, so it cannot have been that bad.

Now it’s back to every-day life, in a week enough e-mail has piled up to keep me busy for quite a while. In addition it is time to do something with all the sweets I have eaten during the vacation…