sweden, day 10

since we didn't get a guided cave tour we decided to at least
have some fun with skidoos (or snowmobiles as they're sometimes
called) today. so we booked two skidoos at "camp alta"[01-19]
in kiruna. it turned out that there's a frozen lake we were
riding our snowmobiles over and then had a track through the
woods. we slowly increased the speed each time we had a long
straight trail. we soon ended at 90km/h. pretty fast, pretty
shaky, and... pretty cold. sonnja and me had a little bit of our
noses uncovered. we ended up with frostbites and dark red areas
on our noses. actually i only uncovered my nose once for about
five minutes. seems this was enough. sonnja's burns were a
little worse. poor her. ulli had no problems at all, her face
was covered all the time it seems.

 

after having a lot of fun with the snowmobiles we got back on
the car again to get closer to lulea. we decided to return our
car there and take the night-train to stockholm. this would on
the one hand save a lot of gasoline (thus money) and time. since
it would have been a long way to lulea we decided to spend the
night in gallivare. on the way there we saw two moose[37-42],
and had again a nice sunset[47-68].

 
 

a few hours later we finally arrived in gallivare[70-77].

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sweden, day 09

we decided to go back to abisko once again. first of all because
they had a free room for us, secondly because we still hadn't
seen any northern lights so far, and thirdly we still wanted to
take the skidoo tour. abisko seemed the perfect place for that.
also there were caves and frozen waterfalls around the place. we
wanted to go there. so the first thing of this day was to drive 
back again for three hours. unfortunately no guided tour was
offered for the caves, so we decided to see the frozen water-
falls[01-30].

 

afterwards we drove back to the hostel, had again the very
unique sauna-experience they offer there at abisko, when
suddenly... we saw them! at 21:44 some chinese guy rushed into
our room and said that there are northern lights outside. at
first we didn't believe it, because a few days ago a chinese
said he spotted them, but it turned out to be only a cloud in
the sky. actually there were a lot of chinese people there. one
said that's because there seems to be a very popular blog on a
trip through north-sweden. it also mentions this hostel we
stayed at we were told. additionally asian people believe that
seeing northern lights gives a long life and loads of luck for
the future. that's why we saw asian people quite often in
sweden. but this time there really were northern lights. un-
fortunately not very bright and strong, but hey, at least there
were some.

 

yippieh, we finally saw northern lights! again all my equip-
ment froze including the tripod. i only took it with me to take
northern lights pictures with it, and then some joints and
turning handles just froze - weird. since, once more, also the
battery pack stopped working, i couldn't take more pictures of
this beautiful phenomenom.

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sweden, day 08

this day we went around with thommy[049] and nadine[050-051].
they brought us to some nice spots near fjelldal (yop, an IKEA
bed is called like this too). first one was a nice place where
there were rendeers[005-019], then a beautiful beach[030-053]
with frozen sand and the sea.

 

next stop was thommy's relatives, having a farm-house right next
to the sea. there we had coffee (or tea as some of us prefered),
delicious cakes, a nice talk, a cat[055-060,128], a baby[125-
126], and a nice walk around the house down to the beach[061-
091]. later we got a guided tour through the cow barn[095-122].
when we got out of the barn it already was dark again. so we
drove back again to stay another night at thommy's place. once
more we had awesome food like salmon and prawns with a very
tasty sauce and white bread. nomnom.

 

the nights up in the north were so very bright and full of
stars[133]. this is so incredible and quite often breathtaking.
i've never seen that many stars in the sky.

my camera really suffers a lot. the temperatures once more made
it freeze, so focusing makes a really painful sound. also the
battery did not last long again. warming up the cells helped
though. and once more condensate fills the body and the lenses.
poor canon. me on the other side by now enjoy the temperatures
outside. yippieh.

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sweden, day 07

day 07 turned out to become a day of relaxing, talking and
doing research and planning stuff since we had no car key yet.



thommy brought us to the airport near narvik where a bus was
leaving for the town center. ulli and me drove to get the key
from thommy's friend in narvik. sonja was doing the laundry in
the meantime.
the bus ride took us more than one hour, but after that the guy
with our key was already waiting at the parking lot and handed
it over. we finally got access to our car again - yippieh!
driving back by car took us again more than one hour. losing car
keys is pretty time consuming we found out. since we lost so
much time, all plans had to be changed. currently we think about
not going back to stockholm by car, but rather stay in the north
of sweden (and maybe norway too) and drive back by a night train
at the end of our trip. this saves a lot of time and is less ex-
hausting than driving by car on icey roads and in total darkness
(since we want to use the few hours of daylight for our activi-
ties).
still no northern lights, but norway is so much warmer, due to
the sea. temperatures range from -15 to -5 degrees. pretty warm
compared to the -32 degrees we had in north sweden.

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sweden, day 06

today we didn't do quite much since sonja lost the keys to our
car somewhere in narvik, norway. so all we did on day 06 was
taking pictures of the hostel's cat, going to narvik by car,
planning our next steps on the tour to finally, after hours of
planning, finding out that the key is gone. the next few hours
we spent searching in narvik for our key, walking again all the
streets and places we've been to since we left the car. but no
way, no key. luckily thommy, the guy we first met on new year's
eve providing the people at the hostel with totally delicious
salmon and crabs, gave us a call, since we said we are going to
meet him today in norway.

 

so, instead of having a coffee with him, he helped us out a lot
by doing all kind of mysterious phone calls to the local police
and many other friends of him to get things arranged for us. so
in the evening we had a promise of our car rental company to
send the key to narvik train station by handing it over to some
conductor where a friend of thommy would fetch it then from the
station (our car rental company offered to bring the key in the
same night to norway for around 500EUR). thommy said there's only
someone at the station a few minutes before and after a train
has arrived. additionally he asked the local police guy (yes,
guy - there was just one polic man on duty at the police station
for a rather big town on a saturday night) to have an eye on the
parking lot where we parked our car before losing the key. then
thommy took us with him back to his house. a ride of a little
longer than one hour. there we had a nice chat with him and his
wife until late in the night. again we had absolutely delicious
food like shrimps, salmon and other stuff they cooked for us.
nomnom. hope the key will arrive tomorrow and everything will
turn out fine...

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sweden, day 05

after getting up at around 09:30 and not much sleep due to the
new year's eve celebrations the night before we were heading to
the meeting point for the dog sledge tour we booked for this
day. again we met thomas, the guy we had much fun with since we
arrived here at the hostel. he was giving instructions on how to
put on the dog's harnesses and how to tie the dogs to the
sledge. all people were divided into two groups. the first group
started with the dogs while the other group was brought to some
other meeting point with some ski-doo where the groups were
switching then. i was in the group to start with the sledge. so
there are four dogs keeping on running all the time, only
stopped by a break you can step on with one foot while the other
one resides on the sledge so you don't fall off. branches of
trees and huge bumps on the trail made it quite hard in the
beginning to stay on the sledge, but after a while one got used
to it and felt quite comfortable riding the sledge. since there
were more sledges for each group than people i could stay on the
sledge when the groups shifted. i really enjoyed it and it was
great fun. the girls also had a lot of fun, but more with the
ski-doo ride over bumpy trails rather than with going with the
sledge.

 

the pretty interesting thing was the fact that the dogs ate
feces from other dogs. the guys told us it's because there's
still a lot of useful thing in the turds the dogs can digest.
but only the first poop after having eaten. the second round
they leave untouched.
i didn't bring my camera to the tour since i thought it's too
dangerous for the equipment. i thought it would break if i fall
off the sledge. but actually i never did. sonja took some
pictures with her camera. i will try to put them online as soon
as possible.

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