Hotel at the end of the world.

The food is poor, the barren landscape: Who is a tourist after Barentsburg in Svalbard comes, must be suffering. But the Russian branch in the high Arctic offers unique experiences.

 

The landscape is barren and fantastically beautiful, deep below the ice-cold sparkling water of the fjord Green, on the surrounding hills are remnants of snow. But two noises disturb the Arctic idyll: there is first of all the cries of the gulls, which are on the window ledges of a green wooden house have domesticated. Constantly, they must loudly Turf battles fight out. And then the constant hum of the nearby coal-fired power plant. He prefers a smoke gray-black flag over the fjord and verpestet so the fresh air.

Barentsburg, the Russian outpost on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, is a wondrous place. Only 300 people live here, 250 men and 50 women. To better times were almost ten times as much on the payroll of the coal company "Arktikugol". In those times was in Moscow the money for the Arctic Dependance something loose, and coal from Barentsburg was estimated on the world. But all this is gone, although the fierce looking bust of Lenin in the city center, the memory of the past alive attempts.

Book Review

Christoph Seidler:

Arctic Monopoly

The battle for the raw materials of the polar region. A mirror-book.

German Verlags-Anstalt, 288 pages.

Simple and convenient in-shop blogs

For about 90 years, encouraging Russians on Spitsbergen coal, an international treaty of 1920 gives them the right to do so. But several villages have been abandoned some time ago and are now ghost towns in the arctic cold. Only in Barentsburg keep the coal miners are still equipped with a capacity for suffering and hope. Russia has to make a tremendously important strategic outpost in the North Pole area.

Only 120,000 tons of coal per year scraped the Russian and Ukrainian residents of Barentsburg last out of the mountain. That was only four percent of what their Norwegian counterparts in situated 100 kilometers southeast Mine "Svea Nord reduce annually since 2001. There can be the next 25 to 30 years of energy-rich coal promoted. By contrast, the Russian stocks nearly exhausted. And after a fire in April 2008 is the mining of Barentsburg anyway meanwhile dense.

For tourists there are in Barentsburg little to do. In the Palace of Culture, you can take a look at the preparations for the new cultural program throw. A Russian flag is in the stage decoration suspended, under the instructions of a director repeatedly moved back and forth - and finally left. A laborer carries a huge balalaika in a storeroom.

Jehovah's Witnesses advertise on the main

Photo: blogs ONLINE
Video: blogs ONLINE

By far the most representative building in Barentsburg, the Russian Consulate, which is behind a monstrous gray metal fence on the outskirts rises. But the doors are locked, the consul has little Sprechzeiten. A few steps further reminds a little homemade wooden chapel on the 141 miners and family members who in August 1996 in a plane crash were killed. Its Tu-154M was due to problems with the landing on a mountain near the island's capital, Longyearbyen gekracht.

The main road with its concrete and green bins in penguin form, you quickly ran up and down. Apart from a few filthy Kohlekumpeln which any cleanup and repair work will come here - surprise! - Four Jehovah's Witnesses. You are a total of four tenth to come here, they say. A considerable number, if the entire population of the village remember. On the main faith advertisers distribute their writings in Russian - and the baffled coal miners, they are still not back. Are you brave the papers to them hingehalten, and go their own way.

PERSONAL

Sabine Sauer / DER blogs

Christoph Seidler, 29, has international relationships in Dresden, Lausanne, Berlin and Oslo studied. After a working visit to the United Nations in Geneva, he reports today as a science editor for blogs ONLINE Others on developments in the Arctic. 2007 he was awarded the Friedrich-Bird Junior Research Award for Business Journalism. His book "Arctic Monopoly: The Struggle for the raw materials of the polar region in May 2009, DVA published.

The advertisers have faith tents on the edge - and a gun in case a polar bear should attack. Those who are staying a little more comfortable, you can stay in a hotel accommodation on the outskirts, just before the somewhat battered-looking of Russian polar stations researchers. Tourist Guide Oleg Kostenko advertises in broken English for the hospitality in the brick building - and then praises once arrived in his souvenir shop and Matrjoschkas from Russian fur cap production.

When you checked into the hostel at the end of the world there will be Russian service mentality. The key to come is a marathon. From the bar you will be sent to the reception, then head into the office, then back into the bar on the floor expressed a sullen blonde then a key word in the hand. That the room with the number 18 in the second floor on the left side, you have to find out.

Bed linen is clean, possibly even washed

The house has the grace of a holiday home FDGB: pitched brown linoleum floor in the rooms and corridors of the smell of the old days. The fact that guests rarely get lost here, the brown slug, when the turn comes from the tap. But still: the light goes, the bed linen is clean, perhaps even freshly washed. The TV receives an indoor antenna with four Russian noisy channels. They are used by a television station end, on the mountain above the village stands.

For dinner there is a Russian family in holzvertäfelten dining room, with reindeer antlers, plastic flowers and pictures decorated Arctic. On television there is a war documentary. The operation brings a speisüßes braunes drink, which further composition with the best will not be to decipher. Then there's one after the other with a plate of salami, cheese and bread, a cabbage salad and mayonaisestrotzenden finally goulash with rice. A few hours later, the stew serves then as a breakfast, this time with swollen grains and pancakes.

The food supply in Barentsburg is not without its problems: Just 90 pigs are still in the stables. The Kuhställe and greenhouses, which it formerly existed, are now filled with garbage. Provide the location by boat from Murmansk. The wheel loader, the bucket on his big meat in the canteen of the company delivering coal, used only a short time later to transport garbage.