Food glorious food

Care Package!

“At the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins.”

- Oscar Wilde

One of the most important things to me is food. It is in fact, what keeps me alive and happy. So undoubtedly there was going to be a post at some point covering the tasty, and not so tasty parts of Svalbard. 

Apparently I'm always eating! 

Food (and drink) is kind of a big deal here. Most people new to Svalbard suffer with sticker shock, a phenomena where things that we can usually get cheaply are a tad more expensive than what we're used to. Here are a few examples:

• 1 litre of Milk - (£2.53)
• Block of cheese - (£9.55)
• Small pack of grapes - (£4.49)
• Loaf of bread - (£3.76)
• Bar of chocolate - (£2.69)
• 1Kg of Potatoes - (£7.67)

The reason for this is that everything has to be flown in; as a result the prices get inflated. The other issue is that sometimes weather conditions prohibit deliveries coming in; which means there can be a limited stock of particular items. Again, making the prices rise that little bit more.  A couple years ago the dock froze over so there was no bacon for over a week! It is remembered as the great bacon shortage.

You play a risky game when buying food here as well. Sometimes you get really unlucky with what you get. This Sandwich (on the right) cost me £2.70. I guess it was mostly for the bread in this situation. Seriously you only get three cuts worth of salad! Also this sandwich has not butter, two slices of ham, and two slices of cheese. 

It was still pretty good though.

If you're prepared to spend an extra 50p and walk a little further you can get a decent sandwich in the UNIS cafeteria. 

You can also see my delicious rocky road cake, only £1.00! The cafeteria is usually the best place to get food. You get can a hot plated meal, or salad, or soup and it's always really cheap. They do loads of desserts. I have eaten tiramisu during a lecture break (no regrets). They have a coffee machine that dispenses a variety of hot beverages; a lot of people use this to power through the early hours of the day. 

One of the major benefits of living here is the massive selection of alcohol. A students dream and it is all very, very cheap!

A litre of vodka is less than £10

We are however, rationed on how much we can buy. This is a throwback to when Svalbard was a mining town. The miners could only buy so much booze, to prevent them from becoming problem workers I guess.

My ration card

So the rules work something like this:

• Middle boxes are hard liquor. (2 of anything under 40% ABV or 1 of anything 40% over two months)
• Top boxes are beer (24 small cans, 12 big cans per month)
• Bottom is liquor (2 of anything under 20% per month)

Buuuuuuuut, wine and cider don't count to the ration card (and they're what I drink most of. Haha!)

IMPORTANT NOTE
The store (the only one in Svalbard) closes for 5 days over Easter and they stop stocking up on food about 4 days before. Essentials like milk, meat, and bread disappear very quickly; so make sure if you go you get what you need to tie you over!!!!

   

Take out
There is only one takeaway in Svalbard currently. KGB takeaway. Our experience with them was a little disappointing, and reviews aren't very positive. So there's still a pretty decent gap in the market for an Arctic takeaway (I'm looking at you Dominoes) 

Going out

We also like to have big friendly meals. One of our most common eats is Svalbar, a great place for food and drink. It has a free pool table and offers for students. The one we take advantage of most is the student burger. A hearty meal with a free soft drink! You can also get reindeer pizza, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Happy Svalbar

The second most common eatery is the Coal Miners. This place is a 3 minute walk away from our barracks and has an awesome atmosphere. The prices are a little higher, but the convenience and friendliness of the staff more than make up for that. We often take cards against humanity, it makes for a great icebreaker to meet people. 

Finally, we have Kroa. This place is the most expensive, but also the fanciest. If you can get a big group of people and book, you get to sit at the round table. An experience that every visitor should get. The menu is limited, but it changes regularly and they always have some adventurous dishes (e.g. mink whale). 

Kroas round table!

There is also a sushi place, but we haven't been there yet.
Guess that'll be my next update. Until then,

Ryan

Hiking: Ice Cave - Larsbreen

My second long hike was up to the Larsbreen ice cave. The little red square is roughly where the cave was this year. As it's a melt water channel in the summer it moves and changes shape. Some years its not accessible at all and when it is it can be any size. This year it was decently sized with lots of little rooms and walkways, there were two main areas. The first part was accessible to hikers without climbing gear and had some ropes installed to help with climbing (This is the bit we stayed in). The second area needed climbing gear and experience, this area i've been told drops down another 50 metres at least, if not more. 

This is a topo map of the area around the town, some of the areas people hike on foot are:

Larsbreen, Trollsteinen, Aventdalan, Sarkofagen, Longyearbreen etc. 

If you wanted to go further out you really need a snowmobile.

 The journey took us around 2 hours to get up to the ice cave and about 40 minutes to get back down. I'm a slow walker and we stopped a lot and it was uphill around 250 metres.

Walking up to the ice cave, the ridge at the top of the picture is the plateau where the ice cave is.

The cave is just a hole in the ground marker with red rods, we had helmets as some places in the cave had low ceilings and I banged my head quite a few times. 

Some of the areas were large enough for all four of us to, but some were small where we had to go one at a time. 

I tried to get lots of pictures but the camera misted over and froze and we had to put it in a hat to warm it up, I managed to get some good pictures eventually. 

The cave had tonnes of formations, some were easy to photograph as they were large. But the small delicate ones were hard to photograph due to the misty/frozen camera. You can see how small some of the gaps were. 

Some more pictures showing the area and the corridors of ice. 

Shot of Lucy as she exited one of the thinner ice corridors (with Kieran behind her), and Jamie in one of the larger ones. 

Starting back for the surface, we had climbed down quite far. Lots of the areas were down short staircases so at the bottom we were down around 30 meters or so. (The cave does go further if you want to climb with gear as explained above.)  

Near the top now, Kieran and Lucy helped me a lot. Lucy held the camera and took pictures and made sure I didn't fall backwards. Kieran mostly pulled me up, especially near the top.  

We can see light!, Jamie and Kieran had already gone up. My hands were numb by this point so I had trouble getting out as the last 3 meters has no rope. Jamie and Kieran pulled me out in the end. 

Last picture from inside the cave that Lucy took before climbing out. 

 Outside the cave, we started heading down before we ran out of light. 

The journey down was a lot faster than the way up.

The whole hike was amazing, the pictures do not do the ice cave justice. The formations were beautiful and it was cozy in there without being claustrophobic. All in all it was worth the 2 hours of walking, and hopefully I'll get a chance to look at some of the other caves nearby. This is the only big one within walking range but there are a lot within snowmobile range. 

Tips:

• Definitely need a helmet
• Make sure the gloves you bring are warm and have good grip
• Microspikes or crampons would have been a major help for us climbing out.
• A sled for the journey down would have been great. 

Thanks for reading

- Miriam

Hiking: Mine 2b

Mine 2b is within the town boundaries and is one of the few places you can hike to without avalanche or other survival gear. It is located between Nybyen and the town and you can see it even in the dark as it has lighting. For most people its the first place they visit when they get here as its not too far away and is a fairly short adventure.

You can see it in this picture as the blob of light halfway up the mountain. I went up with Ryan and Lloyd a few weeks ago when we had about 4 hours of light on our side. The way up is steep and we had to take a few breaks on the way

This is about half way up the mountain

This is the view of the town from the mine (you can see that we're losing light already). The place is open to the weather and has a little step you have to use to hop up into the main area. In this area there is a box with letters in and a guest book

At the end of this room is a staircase covered in snow that leads to another steeper staircase leading up to the next area

Most of these photos are from Ryan, it was pitch black in there and Lloyd was the only one with a headlamp so he had to go first and Ryan used his camera as a light. At the top of this staircase was a massive room with cart tracks on the floor and an old bridge which we decided to cross (not the best idea, it turns out you aren't meant to cross it really) but we got some great photos from it.

 View from the railing

 View of Nybyen from the bridge

  

Pictures from my phone of Lloyd 

Got a few of Ryan as well

 Once we got across the bridge we were still in the big room, just on the other side. The whole room circles around so the bridge is actually pointless to go across, but it was an interesting few minutes at least. This area has gaps where its open to the elements and its completely frozen inside and has great ice formations due to this:

The floor is covered in ice so you had to be careful where you stepped. This area is visited quite often by people and they've signed the walls in chalk

We added to the signatures.

There is another area above this room, the stairs to it aren't inside, they are outside and have a small metal railing to help you. We had basically lost daylight by this point so we decided not to go up to the last bit. If we go up again we'll go up to the top and i'll put up pictures on here of the last room. 

We started heading down and some of these pictures might show what the staircase looks like:

This was one of the lesser covered areas, some parts of the staircase were completely covered in snow and the only way you could get up was by following the footwells other people had made. 

This is the view we had when we got back out, it was basically dark, and it was around 3pm in the afternoon at the latest. This was 3 or 4 weeks ago now, the light is much better so we will probably go again soon. 

The best part of this was the trip down. I had a little sled with me and we all took turns using it to get down. The trip up took maybe 40 minutes, the trip down took us maybe 10. 

This place is a fantastic place to visit. Its a cultural heritage site and you can see how the mines used to operate, There is another room that I didn't put up a picture from which was a room about half way up the long staircase that had belts for moving coal and pushing it down a chute. 

Tips: Bring a headlamp. Even if you go when its light outside, it wont be light everywhere inside.

         It's icy as hell in there so be careful, I went over in one of the rooms trying to explore

         Bring a sled to get down :) 

       

- Miriam