Text 11437, 211 rader
Skriven 2008-02-21 16:23:39 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
Kommentar till text 11382 av Ward Dossche (2:292/854)
Ärende: Svalbard
================
21 Feb 08 10:35, Ward Dossche wrote to Roy Witt:
RW>> RW>> According to the Norwegians, it's a Norwegian administered
RW>> RW>> territory. According to their neighbors on the island, it's a
RW>> RW>> Russian administered territory.
RW>> WD> Having been there I would go for the Norwegian version.
RW>> Since there are two major settlements there, one Norwegian and one
RW>> Russian, why would you need to choose?
WD> Quality of life? I was in both.
You mean the affects of communism still cause poor quality of life?
Amazing...
WD> When you are in Longyearbyen you are in the main Norwegian
WD> settlement. You feel you're in a very modern western world small
WD> town. Every modern comfort is there ... and I really mean "every" ...
WD> small shopping mall, restaurants, bars (at least 5), a 5-star hotel
WD> (it was the former US Olympic team's building during the 1994 winter
WD> Olympics in Lillehammer), an airport with all modern NAV-AIDS (no
WD> commercial refueling), car rental (there are as good as no roads
WD> ...), cell-phone, broadband internet, cable-TV (via satellite), the
WD> full school-system through the last year of high-school, there is a
WD> division of the university of Oslo but only for some 300 glaciology
WD> students, there's a main sports arena, there's a heated indoor 50
WD> meter olympic sized swimming pool, a small hospital, a main satellite
WD> tracking station
And what do the Russkies have?
WD> Have a look at GoogleEarth, Longyearbyen is shown in high resolution:
WD> A 78-14-46-83N 15-27-44-18E Airport
WD> B 78-13-46-52N 15-23-50-34E NASA Satellite tracking station
WD> C 78-13-21-23N 15-39-06-58E University building, dorm and messhall
WD> D 78-13-15-68N 15-38-51-48E Hotel & bar
WD> E 78-12-26-46N 15-35-26-49E "Huset" Restaurant
WD> F 78-13-06-45N 15-38-23-45E Swimming pool and sports arena
WD> G 78-13-09-18N 15-38-32-90E School
WD> H 78-13-04-68N 15-38-26-81E Mall
WD> I 78-13-09-38N 15-37-00-65E Cemetary
WD> J 78-13-05-60N 15-37-21-23E Coal transport system (defunct)
WD> K 78-13.01-77N 15-37-19-20E " " " "
WD> L 78-13-33-87N 15-37-27-26E Supply warehouses and shipyard
WD> M 78-14-18-91N 15-31-28-11E Polution
WD> The airport (A) is used by SAS and Braathens for commercial flights
WD> from Tromso. There is no refueling for commercial planes (just search
WD> and rescue). Everybody landing there and not on a government mission
WD> must bring their own fuel for the flight back. Boeing has tested both
WD> its 777 and 737NG there with non-stop flights from Seattle, landing,
WD> backtrack the length of the runway, take-off and fly back to the
WD> North American continent. Sounds exotic, but via a polar route the
WD> distance is feasable.
WD> The approach is always from the NW as there are mountains on the SE.
WD> Departure is nearly always to the NW expect in times of extreme
WD> weather.
WD> Interesting approach over the sea ice when I got there. We saw
WD> belugas. Later flying back when the job was done we had to take-off
WD> towards the SE due to bad wind. So the captain gets on the intercom,
WD> explains the odd take-off procedure and says "Upon lifting-off we
WD> will make a snappy turn to the left ... ehr ... to the right ... no,
WD> to the left ...". Passengers in the cabin could laugh with it. And
WD> snappy it was. Plane was an SAS MD80 and we had the sensation of a
WD> fighter-jet. I sat on the right, we turned already when still above
WD> the airport and didn't get to see Longyearbyen, on GoogleEarth you
WD> can see how close it is.
WD> The Norwegians don't mine there anymore for coal, it's not worth the
WD> effort, too high sulphur content and money-losing operation. But you
WD> can still see where there used to be a cable-car airborne
WD> coal-transportation system (J+K).
WD> But there's coal dust everywhere from the moment you deplane or get
WD> off the boat, especially in the neighbourhood of defunct coalmines
WD> (M). As a result in the packing list the item "Slippers" is marked.
WD> Every house and private venue (hotel, bar, restaurant, ...) expects
WD> you to take-off your shoes and put on slippers to keep the black dust
WD> out. There're always spare slippers outside as well.
WD> The satellite tracker station (B) is mainly used for
WD> sensing-operations. The staff is NASA's but they're all Norwegians so
WD> I don't expect them to handle sensitive information. The station is
WD> on Svalbard because the visibility window there is larger than e.g.
WD> on the equator. I think they have a minute or so extra time for
WD> downloading imagery.
WD> The university (C) is a small operation. 300 students only in
WD> glaciology. When we were there they had a student from Bermuda. A
WD> black guy and he was continuously freezing his ass off. A parka
WD> zipped-up to his nose. They have several stations up and around the
WD> Longyearbyen Glacier further down the valley. We could go down there
WD> and through holes descended below the glacier and walked on the
WD> gravel-bed with 30 meter of ice above you. Very impressive. It was
WD> still wintery so no run-off water. Just ice. One of the people in the
WD> party panicked because of claustrophobia and had to be evacuated from
WD> below the ice.
WD> The cemetary (I) is interesting. Nearly no-one dies at Longyearbyen.
WD> Only young people live there, the whole town, everybuilding except
WD> the hotel, is government owned. Licences to build are not given so if
WD> you are living there, it means you are needed there. There are no
WD> people near the pension age and certainly not retired, you are
WD> required to leave. Pregnant females have to leave in their 6th month
WD> because the hospital may not be able to deal with an emergency.
WD> Youngsters beyond highschool must leave to continue studying and
WD> cannot stay there when unemployed because the cost to keep the
WD> settlement open is too high.
WD> When someone dies, the remains are shipped back to the mainland. The
WD> reason is that it is very difficult to bury someone there.
WD> Decomposition is very very slow (100-200 years), graves are dug-up by
WD> scavenging wildlife and what has happened is that during the extreme
WD> cold winters corpses just freeze out of the ground the same way that
WD> rocks freeze-up out of the ground. I don't think there are 10 graves.
WD> On a lot of locations throughout the archipelago one will find freeze
WD> dried human remains which are of no interest for scavengers. One is
WD> supposed to leave these corpses undisturbed, some are hundreds of
WD> years old.
WD> A fascinating place.
Interesting. TNX.
WD> Unfortunately there's nothig to be shown for the main Russian
WD> settlement: Barentzburg. It is about at 78-04-56-59N and 14-13-19-60E
WD> but at Google Earth that is very very low resolution.
WD> We rented the icebreaker of the Governor of Svalbard and went there.
WD> That was another experience.
WD> There are old wooden houses with beautiful woodcarvings but most of
WD> the living quarters are old-style communist-era housing blocks with
WD> little comfort. The streets of Barentzburg are dirty and lined with
WD> piles of coaldust.
WD> The single Russian coalmine is still operational but a money loser.
WD> In the late 90-ies there was a serious mining incident with massive
WD> loss of life. Just before that a Russian airliner en route from
WD> Moscow to Longyearbyen made its approach from the SE but was some 3
WD> miles of course when on final and slammed into a mountain. The
WD> incident is broadly documented on the internet.
WD> Barentzburg also has a 50m heated swimming pool and the statues of
WD> Lenin are everywhere ... and left there as a time-piece.
WD> There is a hotel which is sleazier than the sleaziest motel I ever
WD> saw. They have a small interesting museum. Someone needed to go to
WD> the loo overthere, saw the kind of toilets they had there and the
WD> lady pressed her knees together and ran to the icebreaker for relief.
WD> There are some souvenirshops with interesting trinckets. The
WD> postoffice is Norwegian, the single phone-booth is Norwegian. There
WD> is no cellphone coverage and no direct-dial phones to the outside
WD> world except that single phone booth. All mine-workers get a
WD> phonecard every month to call home from that booth.
WD> Wages are paid in Rubbles but in a bank in Moscow. They stay there
WD> for the whole 36 months that their "tour of duty" lasts. Due to
WD> devaluation of the currency, when they get back home the actual value
WD> of what they have is significantly less than what they had at the
WD> actual moment when they signed up.
WD> The interesting part of Barentzburg however is their farm. They grow
WD> all their vegetable requirements indoor in giant primitive
WD> greenhouses. They have at any given moment 300 pigs in about the
WD> cleanest animal farm operation which I ever saw. They have a herd of
WD> cows, most of the year kept indoor, and 3 bulls for breeding.
WD> People there say "Longyearbyen is cleaner, but we have day-fresh
WD> vegetables and meat".
WD> Wewere invited into the VIP-restaurants ... several tables, not one
WD> the same. Nog a single same chair. Flowerpots were cans from
WD> vegetables hung up on the roof with the wrappers not even removed.
WD> Serving staff were extremely uggly out of proportion very unfriendly
WD> communist-era women. Food was very greasy, probably required because
WD> of the climate, based on pork-meats.
WD> People at that time said they were very fortunate to be there in
WD> comparison to other remote areas in Russia. I believe it. They
WD> boasted to have 2 TV-channels there ... one a Russian general-purpose
WD> station, the other was EuroSport. We said "wowww" and though about
WD> the 40+ stations we had at Longyearbuyen, they thought we were
WD> impressed ... nobody commented further and left these good people in
WD> their blissfull ignorance.
WD> One last detail. During WW2 there were British troops in Longyearbyen
WD> and Russian soldiers at Barentzburg. The German battleship Tirpitz
WD> went there from its hiding place in Norway and shelled both
WD> settlements. That was about its only operational sortie before the
WD> Brits bombed it to the bottom of a fjord.
WD> The Russians have an unexploded shell on display in their museum.
WD> Interesting? Need to know more? Just ask questions...
nahhh. I'll take your word for it...:o)
R\%/itt
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