A Sunday afternoon in the Antarctic with drifting snow…

Icebergs (Photo: Noah Trumpik)

Hello, everyone!

It’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m taking a break. The weather isn’t exactly inviting: the wind has picked up to 50 kilometres per hour, with light snowfall and drifting. I had actually planned to send up the station’s PowerKite, which I’d done maintenance on the day before, again. But with this weather, I’d rather not risk a crash … so instead I’m sitting at the computer in my office, writing away. Yesterday was our weekly team meeting, and one of the things we talked about were the topics that some of you had requested … more information on our greenhouse, the individual members of the team, and the different rooms at the station, like the fitness room. We’ll do our best to accommodate your requests in the near future.

Yesterday there was a notification on my smartphone … it always shows me photographs that I took exactly a year ago. And this time a year ago I was on a one-week-long ski vacation to the Seiser Alm plateau. Back then, I was stuck in bed for two days with the flu, and received an email from the AWI telling me that the interview in Bremerhaven was scheduled for 1 April 2019. My first thought was that it was an April Fool’s Day joke, but then decided to request an extension on my vacation to cover the trip to Bremerhaven, and switched shifts with a colleague for 1 April. After that, everything was a blur of activity. Now I’m sitting here and looking at my photos from last year …

And I’m writing a blog about how the nine of us are overwintering here in the Antarctic. Sometimes life can have more twists and turns than you can imagine.

My name is Klaus Guba, and I was born in Munich in 1966. I spent most of my youth in Ascholding, a tiny village with a population of 600, roughly 40 kilometres south of Munich and right on the Isar River. After finishing secondary school I did my mandatory military service in an alpine signal corps battalion in Murnau. Then I started studying medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich – but after six semesters, I got bit by the travel bug and went on a seven-month-long “world tour” through Southeast Asia, Australia, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Tahiti and the USA. And even back then, I wondered what the part of the world south of New Zealand looked like … But first I finished my studies, and then worked at the hospital Klinikum Ingolstadt from 1995 to 2019. During my time there, I worked in various wards, starting with Orthopaedics, then Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Surgery, and finally Trauma Surgery … where I felt right at home. I also completed qualifications as a surgeon and orthopaedist, together with a trauma surgery specialisation. For the last nine years before I resigned, I was the Attending Physician in the Trauma Surgery Clinic, with a focus on polytrauma management.

So how did I end up in the Antarctic?

15 years ago I read a job advert from the AWI: just like every other year, they were looking for a surgeon with additional qualifications in trauma surgery and ideally also dentistry for a 14-month-long overwintering tour in the Antarctic. Back then the AWI was still using the Neumayer II Station, which was set up like a set of giant underground pipes, so a bit like being in a submarine … I was fascinated. The Antarctic, a submarine beneath the ice; the job sounded like the perfect fit. So I didn’t waste any time before applying. But when I was invited for an interview, I had second thoughts and withdrew my application; my twin daughters were only five years old.

Still, the idea of going to the Antarctic never let me go. Then came the inauguration of the just-finished Neumayer III Station on 20 February 2009: a much larger station, standing on struts … and with windows. I was thrilled with the station, and amazed that such a thing could even be built in the Antarctic.

In 2011 I received another email from the AWI: they were looking for a doctor for the Neumayer III Station at short notice … but I had just begun my new job as Attending Physician, and didn’t want to trade my guaranteed, unlimited-term contract for a less-certain two-year contract. Plus my girls were only twelve. So I turned them down again, choosing to play it safe …

And a career as a trauma surgeon is a wonderful thing, but also rough at times. With time, working two weekends of every month and then basically working two weeks without any break at all can be exhausting. When it’s a weekend with beautiful weather and you’re once again operating on someone involved in a serious motorcycle accident, it can be tiring … when you’re 30, it’s a piece of cake; when you’re 40 it’s still perfectly fine; but after I turned 50 I started to notice that I was getting headaches from lack of sleep, and that, after working on eight or nine Saturdays and Sundays a month, and then finally having a whole weekend off, I didn’t have the energy to really do much. And then I started feeling the urge to travel again, and not just a three-week vacation, but longer and somewhere far away … much longer and much farther …

Then it was time to take a radical step: to stop being part of the machine and make a fresh new start. Even if the contract at the AWI was only for two years, the time for the Antarctic had come. My daughters were now 20 years old, and I was still young enough and healthy enough to pursue my dream here. So in November 2019 I wrote my letter of application – or rather, I updated it; the AWI still had the old one. Though the deadline for applications wasn’t until February 2020, this time I knew I absolutely wanted the job. Then came the waiting, and sometimes I even briefly forgot all about it, then it was time to enjoy my beloved Dolomites in South Tyrol in late March … until I got the confirmation mail from the AWI.

By early May, I had a signed contract. After that, things had to get done quickly … quitting my job and clearing everything out of my old apartment … all the furniture, my desktop PC, television, and most of my books and clothes went to family, friends or goodwill. The only exceptions: my records and CDs, my old synthesizer and some of my skis, which I put in storage at a friend’s home … I just didn’t have the heart to give absolutely everything away. After all, I might be coming back …

On 30 July 2019 I left for Bremerhaven in a car packed to bursting, with my bicycle and skis on the roof rack … you already know the rest of the story. And now I’m sitting here in my office in the Antarctic writing a blog … about life, and how it can have more twists and turns than you can imagine …

So that’s the story of me and my reasons for choosing this absolutely one-of-a-kind job …

I hope to hear from some of you again soon. Best wishes to the world at large from the (for the time being) eternal ice, and especially to our blog readers, family and friends back home.