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august 2010
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sweden, day 04

day 04 of our sweden trip - new year's eve. we started it by
going to a nearby lake. the lack of daylight is really hard to
get used to. there's a little daylight from 09:00 to around
13:00, then it starts to get dark again. the surface of the lake
was totally frozen and there were some people ice-skating or
walking on the ice in the distance. so we dared to step on the
ice too and walked around a little. sonja did some drawings in
the snow too.

 

next we tried to find the tourist information in
abisko but at first we found some exhibition centre (or whatever
it was, we're still not sure) providing us with an exhibition
about wild life in north sweden and some multimedia show about
the stars and the galaxy. due to that the local people put up
some telescopes and people were invited to participate in
watching the stars. so we did participate and had a nice view on
some stars and the moon.
after getting back to our hostel we enjoyed the sauna there.
sauna at this hostel means that the old man running this place
tells you a certain time when you have to be at the sauna with
the maximum of other eight people. so, the group of people go in
there and get instructions from the old man. going to the sauna
here also doubles as taking a shower (they are very keen on
saving warm water here, i don't know why). once you were given
water to shower and had taken your seat in the sauna, the old
man leaves again and comes back 1.5 hours later. during this
time you are free to do as you - and the other people - like in
the sauna.
in the evening we gathered with lots of people of the hostel at
the local helicopter landing place around a fire they lit there.
there was also a friend of the people who run the hostel from
norway here. he had absolutely delicious salmon with him which
he gave away to all the people in the hostel that wanted to
taste it. this guy turned out to be quite fun actually so we
ended up with him and some other guys in the kitchen of the
hostel being a little drunk and having fun. also one of the two
sons who run this place together with their father was at the
celebration. he will be our guide for tomorrow's dog sledge
tour and he's quite fun too.

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sweden, day 03

the night on day 03 in our art-suite was awesome. i slept very
good, the girls unfortunately did not that well. inside the room
it had 5 degrees below zero, outside less than 30 degrees below
zero. our suite had some howling wolves and moon theme, but the
wolves resembled cats actually, at least they did to me.

 

after having a really great breakfast we had a look at the rest
of the hotel rooms. then we went on to some local sami museum.

 

there we had a delicous reindeer soup and coffee. next to the
museum is a very old wooden church.
after a final visit to the ice hotel and a visit to the sauna
there we went on to abisko to get to our hostel. there we saw
the first cat on our trip. ulli won a beer, since i said i pay a
beer to the first one who sees a living cat. meow. at least a
cat, but no northern lights so far. too bad.

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sweden, day 02

we left stockholm[001-003] quite early in the morning today,
heading back again to the airport. our plane then left on time
bringing us up northwards to kiruna[013-053]. loads of snow, a
nice sun- set in the early afternoon and a really small airport
is what we were facing after landing. then we got our car, a
ford focus.  it was preheated, a thing pretty common here in
sweden. you plug your car to some power-outlet and the engine
gets warmed up and so does the cabin if you have some heating
device in there.  pretty weird but at least we didn't have to
get on to a totally freezing cold car.  additionally the windows
are not frozen or covered with ice or snow.
so we started driving to kiruna city to get some supplies (as in
alcohol from a system-bolagen, a liquor-store with a monopoly on
selling alcohol) and a little food. later we had some strange
food at some fast-food restaurant[047-050] (as we guessed),
namely a cut saussage with mashed potatoes and sauces. pretty
weird and not as tasty as we had one in stockholm.

 

after doing some PEBKAC on the tomtom GPS (really totally my
fault) and thus having two hours additional driving to the wrong
village we finally arrived at the ice-hotel[054-165] in kiruna.
a totally awesome place. the hotel offers warm and cold rooms.
cold rooms are totally made of snow and ice, with reindeer fur
and lights and some ice furniture as chairs and tables.
additionally there are carved sculptures and other artsworks
all around the places. each room also has its own theme. there
is also a bar totally made out of snow and ice selling "absolute
vodka" exclusively in ice glasses - very environment friendly.

 

i then took a walk outside alone with my camera to take some
pictures while the girls were enjoying some hot berry juices
they offered at the reception. it had around 32 degrees below
zero but it was absolutely great outside. after around 60
minutes outside my camera froze and stopped working properly.
focus adjusting, zooming and the battery pack stopped working.
additionally my tripod was getting very very hard to adjust the
position of the head. so i decided to go in again. very inter-
esting experience - man and machine versus nature, 0:1.

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sweden, day 01

so, first day for us - ulli, sonja, nostromo - in sweden on the
hunt for polar lights. first step to get there was taking the
train[01-08] where sonja was cutting (some of) her hair[03-06],
then the bus[09-11] to the airport[12-16] in vienna and the air-
port in stockholm[17-24]. at the airport we decided to leave our
big luggage pieces at the airport since we have to get back to
the airport tomorrow again anyway to get our flight to kiruna.
so we locked it away[21-24] at the airport. then we walked
around in stockholm[25-52] seeing various buildings and "gamla
stan" (old town). we had hot chocolate at a very nice cafe[43-
47]. afterwards we went to our couchsurfer-hoster named per-
marten (thanks once more to him for hosting).

  

tomorrow we will get back to the airport and take our plane to
kiruna. there we get our car. hopefully.

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