19th - мать Россия

Morning as usual and today’s plans would be simpler than usual as today we only had plans for the morning. We visited Pyramiden in Billefjorden, an old Russian coal mining town app. 4 hours from Longyearbyen. At its peak it had 1200 people living and working there, but with the mining ending in 1998 the town was now inhabited by 6-7 people at any time. It’s a ghost town now and according to one of our guides it’s near identical with the numerous towns spread out over all north-eastern Siberia. Being a Russian mining ton it was technically Russian ground we were walking on but at least the usual passport and visa mess wasn’t necessary.

The town was horrendously bleak, nothing like I have ever seen before. According to the local guide, Sasha, he has been here 4 years and have no plans to leave as he enjoys spending time here. It must require a special mental attitude to cope with this environment. But we are all different so it he likes it here it’s all good. People are in the process of cleaning the surrounding area to get rid of trash and destroyed buildings while keeping the center and those buildings intact. A lot has changed since 1998 but there is still quite a bit to go.

Sasha. 

The center of town, called Champs-Élysées. You can see the similarities, right? The grass seen here is the only grass in all of Svalbard. Imported from Ukraine. Still going strong after all these years.

We visited the former main administration building (now visitor’s center) where they had a few old yellowed photos and rooms in various stages of disrepair. I doubt anything has been done to the building since the mining was shut down. There was a gymnasium that looked very well kept and I am assuming it’s because they still occasionally use it. There was also a large auditorium and that didn’t look much worn, either.

The northern-most statue of Lenin in front of the visitor's center.

It might be a ghost town but the view is nice.

The building contains a swimmingpool which was used for training by the Russian olympic swimmers.

Coming inside it was clear that there had been close to no upkeep.

The bar was very nice and felt almost out of place sitting in between the other buildings.

While bringing the ship around into Tempelfjorden we were briefed on disembarkment procedures for tomorrow; if you have a flight out when most of the passengers do (including me) we disembark early morning and all luggage not needed until leaving Longyearbyen will be taken directly to the airport. Nice service!

In the evening we had a raffle and auction (with all earnings going in full to Planeterra). The raffle tickets had been sold the last couple of days in the reception and the winners were drawn tonight. The auction was for the G flag that had been waving in the front of the ship on the tour which would be signed by staff and whatever crew you’d get your hands on. I skipped the raffle so I had more freedom to go for the flag, we ended up being two fighting for it but when he bumped the bid to 300 USD I had to realize that he had beaten me. And I heard later that he had donated the flag to the two young siblings (14 & 15 years old) that had also been on the tour.

So not only did he outbid me, he also turned out to be a better person than me.

Bastard.

The flag in question.