Sohere in random order, my SWERUS expectations and what became of them:
1. 45 days is a long time. Yes, it is. Usually time passes faster when a lot is happening, but I didn’t expect the time to pass so fast. On the whole cruise I never had a moment where I thought “oh no, it’s still 4/3/2 weeks to go”, it was more like “what, another week has passed?” It is unbelievable how fast the time has gone, but still it feels like ages ago since we went on this trip.

2. It will be very cold. Well, temperature perception is a very subjective thing, and I am not the ”easy-freezing” type. I knew before that the temperatures were to be between -5 and +5 C, but still I packed a lot of warm clothes which I didn’t need at all. Actually, I was walking around in a t-shirt or maybe a sweater most of the time. In the end of the cruise, we had some really cold days, and then there were of course times when really warm clothing was needed, mainly when we were out on the aftdeck doing GoFlo casts.

3. Clothes for 6 weeks. I am a woman, so it is normal that I bring too many clothes, right? Not only warm ones. I am not a very girlie person, but still I ended up with so many clothes I didn’t wear. On the one hand, I just didn’t need all the really warm clothes I brought, and on the other hand, I did quite some washing of shirts and underwear during the trip. I had known there was a washing machine, but I just thought there would be no time or energy to wash. But especially when working at night there was always a short moment to start the machine, and then it was often so that we were sharing a machine, so there was always someone washing where you could throw your things in. And that’s nicer than piling up all the dirty clothes somewhere.

4. The candy. Already on test cruises before this expedition, I have been the one to bring some candy for everyone onboard. It was really difficult to upscale the experience of one-week-trips to a 45 day expedition … and everyone said I was crazy to bring a box with 23kg of chocolate, cookies etc. This box was in the mainlab, so basically everyone working there and passing by was eating from it, still I thought it would last forever – but it was empty 2 weeks before the end of the cruise.

5. The food. I have been eating on Oden before, so I knew I haven’t had to worry about the food, it was excellent – and this is how it was on this cruise. I still was afraid that it would be mainly meat and potatoes, and I am not a big fan of potatoes, and meat every day is also not really my cup of tea. There was a lot of that, but that was not a problem, there was always the option to skip either ingredient and still not leave hungry. What I was impressed of was the fruit and vegetable part – of course, the fresh stuff and salad became less as the cruise proceeded, but still it was amazing how there was still something, and how the cooks combined things throughout the cruise so that there was always something fresh. And the cakes…I am happy that we only had those when there was a birthday on board, otherwise I would have gained quite some weight on that cruise – which was in general a challenge with 3 warm and tasty meals per day, even with the ongoing physical work.
 
6. The wildlife. We knew that there are polar bears in the Arctic (and plenty of other wildlife). Of course we were hoping to see some. But we didn’t expect to see so many (must be about 10 in total), and also not so close to us as the last one. Not to talk about all the cool Arctic birds, and the walruses...

7. The workload and the stress. I expected we would work a lot, and this is what we did. Our shiftwork planned for total 12 h work and 12h free time, but most of the time we worked more than that (well, and then less after the last station). But that was fine, we all knew that we have to use the time we are up here, and we were all really motivated to work. And it was not so bad – this is just my personal opinion, other participants might think different: In the hotspot area I (and not only I) usually just slept only a few hours per day, and there were a couple of times where I just didn’t sleep at all for 2 days, and at times I was just totally exhausted. But that was not such a big problem; I think that’s part of the experience, and I had the feeling I could recover pretty quickly when there were less intensive periods. What I didn’t deal with it well, especially in the beginning of the cruise, was the uncertainty when sampling would be happening or not and the stress of many things happening unexpectedly at the same time. Especially when I had the feeling that the stress was unnecessary or avoidable. That got a lot better as the cruise proceeded. On the one hand, I got more relaxed about things, also figured out the priorities and managed to set them and also got more confident in saying that we need more time for a certain task. Secondly, we all got more tuned in with each other, everyone got a better feeling how long things take and what kind of communication method should be used.
 
8. The people. When we were boarding in Tromsö, my colleague Tommaso said to us “Let me hug you before we hate each other”- just for fun, of course. But still, there was some truth in that thought, and we all were a bit afraid that the stress and the workload might lead to conflicts. But – again my personal opinion – it went really well. I did get angry at some people at some point during the cruise, I was shouting at some people, I was even crying about what some people said, but most of the conflicts got solved quickly and at the end I can say I am at peace with everyone. On the other side, I was very positively surprised by many people on this cruise – I was really happy about the friendship and the family-feeling that developed between many of us.  And I am also happy about getting to know and appreciate people I haven’t talked to so much before and with whom I had many good discussions, both about science and other topics. An unknown factor for me before this cruise started were our Russian colleagues, as I haven’t had much contact with them before, but now we were about to work together closely. I heard that they are all really hard workers, and from the brief encounters with them I had the impression that they were also nice people, but I didn’t expect that it would be so great to work with them! (Especially with my nightshift-team – they just did an amazing job and we had so much fun together). I have also learned a lot from many of them, on the science side and also about the Russian culture and way of life. And even if I am (in contrast to Emma) apparently not really talented for the Russian language, I have managed to pick up a couple of words and phrases... I really look forward to working together with them in the future and to seeing them again soon.

9. Free-time activities. As I said, I expected to work a lot, but as both a big optimist and a person who always likes to do something, I had over-optimistically prepared for the possibility of free-time: I brought a huge pile of yarn for knitting and a lot of e-books. Well, I didn’t read a single line. But I knitted (okay, for the experts: crocheted) 4 polar bear hats for colleagues onboard. Mainly because that didn’t require so much brain-power, on the contrary, it really helped to concentrate and not fall asleep when waiting for something or sitting really tired in a meeting, but also because I could do that while talking to people. In general I had the feeling I wanted to spend my free-time on board together with other people, only very few times on this cruise I had the feeling that I needed time for myself or wanted to be alone. Most of my writing I did while sitting in one of the public areas on the ship, and I also went quite often to the sauna or to the occasional movie in the Oden-cinema. Another thing I liked was walking around on the ship and looking what others are working, asking them about their instruments and the science they want to do. I started with that quite late, because the first part of the cruise I was too busy with my own work and anyway didn’t have much of free time, and later it required still some energy and brain power, so I was not always in the mood. So didn’t do it as much as I wanted to do, but still enjoyed it a lot.

10. The isolation and the contact to the outside world. I know that some people onboard worried about the isolation and being far away from everything. I never did. I didn’t see this at a problem at all, and it hasn’t been one. On the contrary, I really enjoyed the vast landscape outside, I enjoyed that there was nothing around but us. I didn’t miss having internet, facebook or my normal email (I only gave my email address on the Oden to my family). We had a daily news report, but I haven’t had the energy or motivation to read it more than a few times. I didn’t really follow what happened in the outside world – in a way I was happy with the SWERUS-world. There was a lot of work, there were science discussion, there was the interaction with people onboard and it was kind of nice to just live in “this world”. But without the distractions from outside, many of us (at least the younger generation) have found time to reflect about different aspects of our own life, about decisions we have to make, about what we want to do with our life and our future. And since SWERUS was something that many of us have been working on preparing for quite some time, many of us have postponed certain decisions and thoughts to their “life after SWERUS”. The combination of having the “SWERUS” deadline, the time for reflection and the company of people who are also in the reflection mood has been a really good experience. Of course, it remains to be seen how much of the SWERUS mood we can carry on to our normal life now, but I really hope that a bit of it stays there – and that we also manage to carry part of the SWERUS friendships to our everyday life.

Altogether, this expedition has been a great and very intense experience, and definitely one that I wouldn’t want to miss. I would do it again. And I hope I will do it again, sometime, someway... all the best to Leg 2, and goodbye!