“I wonder what it must be like to spend a few days at Guesthouse 102, I wonder if Dr. Youngs could post pictures of the inside of the building?”
A Wilderness student asked me this question after reading my talk, “A Polar Bear’s Death.”
That got me thinking: we have talked about “pods” on faraway Mars and other shelters in the wilderness. Why not post on a pod on the most faraway north town on our globe — Longyearbyen on the Svalbard archipelago.
So here is some information about Guest House 102, where I stayed. I am kicking myself for not having taken more pictures inside the building, but I do have a few. I’ll begin with several photos to remind you of how remote the little Arctic town of Longyearbyen really is, then we will go inside and warm up.
Here is the front of the “guest house.” It was once a coal miners’ bunk house.
I took this picture from the front of good old “102” looking up towards the peak above Longyearbyen. I hiked up there, but not straight up the cliff face!
And this picture is from the top of that peak.
If I had walked out on the brink as some of my fellow adventurers did, I would have taken a picture down over the guest house and the town. But I am cliff-averse, just as Indiana Jones is snake-averse: “Snakes! Why did it have to be snakes? I hate snakes!”
Back “home” we enter 102 and need to check our boots at the door. Luckily it is nice and warm inside.
In the little kitchen a Thai woman is serving up breakfast in this photo. Thailanders are one of the largest ethnic groups in Svalbard.
Here is the breakfast: cold cuts, cheese, pickles, bread, jam, cereal, coffee, and yogurt — a simple but hearty meal.
(For lunch, after most of us have been out in the cold, we were welcomed back with a hot meal.)
Here are some of my fellow lodgers around the tables where we ate and socialized. Once at my table I counted native speakers of six different languages — all speaking English as our common language.
I was eating at one of these tables with some of the local guides when a tourist asked about the polar bear that had attacked a tourist and a guide gave the epic reply: “”You mean, a tourist attacked a polar bear!”
I wish I had taken pictures of the reception desk and some rooms. I didn’t but I did photograph the inside of the doors to our common restrooms — each of them features a Gary Larson polar bear cartoon like this one. There were four in all.
(Did you know, by the way, that Gary Larson attended WSU, the second best university in the Inland Northwest.)
