More from the snowy wastes

Here (below, left), lit by the evening sun yesterday, is the famous 20th century 'ice' cathedral at Tromso, part of the re-building of the whole town which had effectively been completely destroyed and its population dispersed during WWII. We left Tromso last night and stopped briefly in Hammerfest (pictured above left) early this morning before continuing on our way to the North Cape, Europe's most northerly point. There are expeditions tomorrow to the Russian border by snow scooter from Kirkenes which lies (believe it or not) to the east of Istanbul and Cairo. I am reading two books alternately, both painful in their own way and both with Vienna, in a sense, at their core: The Enemy at the Gate, an account by Andrew Wheatcroft, historian and chairman of Moffat Book Events, of the last big push west in the 17th century by the Ottoman Turks, and the new biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein by Ray Monk