Meteorogist Katarzyna Kudłacz conducts weather-related research at the Polish Polar Station Hornsund on the icy island of Spitsbergen, in the Arctic Ocean.

There, Kudłacz and her colleagues live and study amidst some of the most extreme, inhospitable conditions on the planet.

But as Kudłacz was recently reminded, they’re still never quite alone.

Last week, while preparing breakfast in the research station, Kudłacz suddenly noticed several large figures peering in through a nearby window.

Truth is, they were pretty hard to miss.

“The meeting was quite unusual, as the bears looked into the windows of the polar station with great interest. [I] saw a mother and her two cubs in the window,” Kudłacz told The Dodo. “[I] immediately alerted the entire station.”

It was a family of polar bears, curiously peering in to see what was going on inside.

Evidently, the surprising sight of bears at the window was enough to negate the need for caffeine with their breakfast.

“We didn’t need coffee to wake us up this morning,” a spokesperson for the research station wrote.

There are many polar bears living in the area, though it isn’t often that they arrive so close to the station. Kudłacz and her colleagues, however, didn’t want to give them too warm a welcome.

“It is important to remember that these are wild animals, and for them and for us it is better to keep a certain distance,” she said.

So, using some noisemakers, staff at the station spooked the bears into moving on their way.

For Kudłacz, it was an incredible way to start the day — one she won’t soon forget:

“It was wonderful experience,” she said. “But also a bit stressful.”