Just some few words before I go down to my cabin and collapse into bed. It’s already yesterday by the time you see this, we are in Kongsfjorden on our way to Blomstrand to switch trekking groups. The weather is soooo beautiful, the midnight sun shining through this incredibly varied cloud cover down on the ocean and the glaciers.

It’s been a good cruise. We haven’t come across any polar bears but we made it over 80° N for the 8th time this summer, this time by Moffen island where we were greeted by the walrus lying like oversized Havana cigars on the beach. Walrus is always good to see!

Then it’s the passengers. No Mr. India, or Mr. Curry as the waitresses call him, this time. Amazing how the smell of spices always lingered in the air wherever he went. No hiding away for him. This time we’ve had a lot of German people and the trip’s oddity: Four Catalanes, from Catalonia in Spain. Not much of an oddity that… We also have a journalist on board, she writes a travel column in the Sunday Telegraph; you might find something interesting about Svalbard there in coming weeks. I sat next to her at dinner tonight and we chatted away about travelling and writing, travel litterature and garbage, it was the most interesting conversation I’ve had with a passenger for a long time. You know, it’s company policy to have us mingle with the guests at all meals and quite often I hate it, when working 16 hrs. a day and sometimes more I consider it ridiculous not being allowed to breathe freely if you want during meals. I, and some others on board, have had quite a few heated talks about this topic with various bosses in the company so that now we are allowed our own guide-table at breakfast (i.e. for our start-of-the-day meeting) and dinner. What generosity!!! Then according to Murphy’s law some grumpy tourists whose life seems to depend on them being able to sit with 5 other grumpy tourists at the same table have two cruises in a row gotten our table. And it’s only two cruises ago that we got the generous permission from our generous employer. Sometimes, life sucks a bit.

But tonight it didn’t. Usually it doesn’t. But I can’t help sometimes feeling utterly sorry for the poor people who are trying to enjoy the fabulous view and their hard-earned holiday dinner, and find themselves having to politely try to entertain an exhausted, momentarily braindead tour guide who just wants to shut up, close her ears and eat. Nothing more. Absolutely nothing more.