How well traveled are you really? ( Archived) (43)

Bahrain (born there)
Brazil
Belgium
America
Scotland
England
Finland
Germany
Holland
Spain
Portugal
Denmark
Norway
Malta
Mexico
Egypt
Israel
Italy
Ireland(of course)
Japan

Hi jbibiza,



in which way you mean it...

Do you want to hear about the towns or the countries, we have been...



When you have been in a town of a country you haven´t seen the people living there...



London is not England ...

but I will answer you...

I've never been to Svarbard, but it being Norwegian, I'll try to answer...


Svalbard is an archipelago lying in the Arctic Ocean north of mainland Europe, about midway between Norway and the North Pole. The archipelago is the northernmost part of the Kingdom of Norway. Three islands are populated: Spitsbergen, Bjørnøya and Hopen. The largest settlement is Longyearbyen. The Svalbard Treaty recognises Norwegian sovereignty over Svalbard and the 1925 Svalbard Act makes Svalbard a full part of the Norwegian Kingdom.

Svalbard has a population of approximately 2,400 people as of 2005. Approximately 70% of the people are Norwegian; the remaining 30% are Russian, Ukrainian and Polish. The official language of Svalbard is Norwegian.

The Norwegian government has built a "doomsday" seed bank to store seeds from as many of the world's crop varieties and their botanical wild relatives as possible. The bank was created by hollowing out a 120-meter tunnel on Spitsbergen cut into rock with a natural temperature of -6 degrees Celsius, refrigerating it to -18 degrees Celsius, and then storing seeds donated by the 1,400 crop repositories maintained by countries around the world


In Longyearbyen, the midnight sun lasts from April 20 to August 26, and polar night lasts from October 26 to February 15. From November 12 to the end of January there is civil polar night, a continuous period without any twilight bright enough to permit outdoor activities in the absence of artificial light.

In addition to humans, four predominantly terrestrial mammalian species inhabit the archipelago: the Svalbard field mouse Microtus epiroticus, the Arctic fox, the Svalbard reindeer (a distinct sub-species), and polar bears.
Since polar bears occur very commonly on Svalbard and are known to hunt humans on occasion, all people need to take precautions when outside the settlements: this includes carrying a rifle. Nevertheless, the law protects polar bears, forbidding anyone to harm or disturb them unless it is necessary to remove a considerable danger of injury to a person.
A large number of aquatic mammalian species also inhabit the archipelago, including whales, dolphins, seals and walruses.

The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), established in 1993, is the world’s northernmost higher education institution. Located in Longyear at 78º N, the university offers undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate courses to approximately 350 students each year in Arctic sciences.


says Wikipedia...