Lapptastic!

Ok, so this is going to be another massive post much like the London trip.

Friday: 4pm I arrived at T-Centralen, decided that some quick Thai food would do for dinner and then met up with the gang and waited around for the train at 5:13. I started out the trip superlame, editing a paper for Applied Industrial Organization. Eventually, I got a little bored and decided that I'd join in on the party that was happening...oh yeah, Stockholm to Kiruna = 17 hours on the train. All evening, overnight, and then arrival at 11...should have been 10, but we had to stop the train for a while later in the evening. However, by this point, I was well into a sharing of a bottle of Explorer Vodka with a cabin full of people (I found it funny to buy Explorer as I was taking my first trip to Lappland). So yeah, we got tipsy on a train, the french started smoking inside and we almost got booted...

Saturday: Noonish we arrive at the Ice Hotel near Kiruna, we did a tour and then had a while to walk around the hotel and take pictures of the Art/Design Rooms and the entire structure in general. We also got to watch a guy slip and fall on his ass...and then watch his friend do the exact same thing while trying to help him up. Tragic, but funny. Drinks at the icebar were a cool 105 crowns (exchange rate is currently the worst it has ever been for the ol' US of A...6.2 crowns per dollar...you do the math and figure out why I didn't have anything there but some more pictures). Kasia and I tried to visit as many rooms as possible and get a bunch of silly pictures, and we were pretty successful.

Next was lunch, not very thrilling but certainly filling. Thankfully I was able to buy a new bottle opener, with the opening portion a smiling moose head and the handle made of reindeer antler. Very silly, but I don't own a bottle opener, so not too frivolous. After lunch we headed over to the worst place ever for claustrophobic people...the LKAB Iron Mine. We ended up going to 540m below ground (about 1k beneath the peak of the mountain) to tour around, learn how they mine iron, look at the huge machines they do it with, and learn about the history of the world's purest iron deposit.

Afterwards, we had to bus it down to Tärendö. There, we had a delicious dinner, a few drinks, and ended up hanging out in the woodfired sauna for a couple hours. Afterwards, I established my dominance at darts while others played pool, werewolf, or just hung out.

Sunday: Oh man Sunday...Sunday was a good day. First off, wonderful Swedish style breakfast. 2nd, Dog Sledding for an hour. Those little guys are powerful...and they love to work. I mean, it was like they only live to drag around that sled, every other moment they were just wanting to go go go go go. I shared the sled with Eva Maria (yeah, only one actual person who knew what they were doing there with 10 n00bs on the 5 other sleds). She called me Steve, I cried a little. But at least the dogs liked me :) I got a lot of really good sled perspective pictures of dogs' butts. Good times. After that I had a little break, anxiously awaiting my 2 hours of snowmobiling. Now, I didn't know exactly what to expect, of course I've jet skied a number of times, and have comfortably hit about 60mph on those...but that's on water, without those DeathSticks all around you (trees). However, we had to share the ride w/ another person, so I only ended up driving for an hour. I was a passenger at the start, ended up getting tossed off the snowmobile when he tried to corner a little too hard w/out enough weight redistribution. My turn came eventually and it was amazing. short learning curve I felt, and pretty soon I was breaking the speed limit (60kph) by hanging back from the group and getting up space to make some good runs. The snowmobile was pretty big, and rather heavy, but I'm confident that I managed to get it airborne a couple times with no death or injury involved (or falling off at all, again). The best part was when we got back to the long straightaway on the river and we could really open it up. We peaked at 95kph (about 60, just a touch under) and I really wanted to go faster but didn't leave myself enough room to be completely safe.

Sunday dinner was salmon, salmon and more salmon. Sweeeeet. Sunday after dinner was getting into a 44 degree Celsius hot tub, jumping in the snow, jumping in the sauna, jumping in the snow...and eventually just being too hot and heading back inside to shower and start the party. I had a previously made darts challenge, defended my title once, then lost later...Gergely and I were up until 4 finishing that last game and getting ridiculously hammered. He ended up sleeping on the couch downstairs, I actually found my bed.

Monday: last day :( it would have been fun to have a breathalyzer at breakfast...then I napped again before suiting up to be the Snice Sculpture photographer. Then some snow soccer, more picture taking, reuniting with the Reindeer farm gang (they didn't rave about how fantastic it was, so maybe it wasn't?), and taking lunch and looking at souvenirs. I ended up getting a knife (I hope it makes it to the states), the most practical one they had, ideally I'll actually use it as a fishing knife or something...it was the only one with a good, medium sized blade. We then had to pile on the bus at 3:30 and drive down to Luleå, stop at Max for dinner (whee. hamburgers, but far better than McDonald's), and get to the airport to catch a plane home to Stockholm's Arlanda airport. I slept despite two crying babies...then we made a triumphant return to Stora Lappkärsberget (Lappis, my dorm complex) in a van packed with 10 exhausted Arctic Circle Veterans.

Next...Copenhagen.