Last year I became 42 and to celebrate this I did something I usually did for “special birthdays”. I did a party. My wife and my mother surprised me with a very special present:

Three Weeks

To understand this the following background info. For more than 10 years I have been talking about seeing the northern lights but I never did something to actually see them. Eight years ago I became father and having the responsibilities equally split between myself and my wife (yes … childminding during the week too) means that if I take a couple of vacation days at my job I still have to do child minding. For young kids the northern lights might sound intresting (yeah … for a couple of minutes or so) but waiting for them will turn them off quickly.

So my wife arranged with my mother that all of my family duties are beeing covered for three weeks so that I am able to go to the northern norway.

The Plan

• On the 7th of march I am leaving at 6:55 from Zürich (CH) to Oslo.
• Change plane and fly to the coast (Bergen)
• Take a 3 days trip with the boat along the coast of norway.
• Stay for 2.5 weeks in Tromsoe
• Take the plane back to Oslo
• Change plane and fly to Basel Euroairport.

The criticism

When I told that a plan to a collegue which has been there allready he warned me: Are you sure? Have you any idea how big Tromsoe is? I mean … there are a couple of catedrals, nice ladscape and and indefinite nuber of “the most northern …” but besides that tromsoe is not too entertaining. BTW: The weather may be bad. Did you consider that?

The preparation

I booked anyway :-D. As prep – because it was late augustlast year I did a photographer basic and advanced course here. I started to make pictures under bad lighting conditions. I read a lot about northern lights. And figured out that at the same time when I am staying in tromsoe a almost total eclipse takes place there (on the 20th to be exact).

As part of my preparation I did rebuild my homepage (it was not nice anyway). And did something even worse. You are just browsing the result. I prepared a sperate page to log my stay in Norway. Unlike the rest of this site I will write in german.

You can find the page here.

Have fun

Martin