Kiruna

This time, I went to Kiruna, which is a town in the Arctic Circle in Sweden. The adventure started Friday afternoon. I met up with Dan, a fellow student from U of I. He's studying at DTU in Denmark. We met up at the Lund train station, and caught a train to Stockholm. In Stockholm, we met up with Sam, a friend of Dan's, also from DTU and U of I. During the hour wait for the night train, we grabbed cash and a bite to eat. When we boarded the night train, we were excited to find that we had been put in a three bed room, which was much nicer than the six bed room I had taken to Stockholm on the previous trip. Dan and I thought we'd have the room to ourselves since no one got in at Stockholm, but a stop later an older gentleman joined us. Since Dan and I want to not bother the man, we talked to the conducter and he allowed us to move into Sam's three bed room. So we spent the evening playing cards, drinking, and watching stand up comics off of Sam's laptop.

The next morning, we woke up, and transfered trains. We were now on our last train to Kiruna. Breakfast/lunch consisted of a candy bar and tea bought on the train. Another three hours later, we arrived i Kiruna, 23 hours after we had left Lund.

We arrived at the train station(duh), and walked up the hill into Kiruna. Right away you see the mine, and opposite it the town. We walked to the hotel, finding the supermarket, atm, and systembloget along the way. Once in our room, we cleaned up and went to eat some real food at the hotel's resturant. Dan and I had reindeer with a potato and cheese thing, it was very good. After dinner, we watched American shows on Swedish tv, such as Junkyard Wars. After a while, we went to sleep.

Sunday, we ignored the alarm we had set and missed breakfast. Woke up finally around lunch, so we went out and found a place for lunch. Later, we caught the bus for the tour into the mine. The tour was very cool, because they actually take you into the mine, 540 meters down. It's the worlds largest iron ore mine. We had to wear hardhats so stuff didn't hit us in the head. No danger from equipment though, because they are mining about 1000 m down. On the tour we watched a movie, had the tour guide talk, had free tea and coffee, and also got free iron pellets and ore to take home. The airline is going to love me when I go home. Another interesting tidbit, by 2035, LKAB, the mine company, is going to have to move about half of the town, because its right over where they'll be blasting, and buildings will collapse into the mine. I had a hard time believing that the government would allow this, but, LKAB is owned by the Swedish government, so there ya go. After the tour, we went back to the hotel and made frozen pizza for dinner. Later at 1:20 am, we heard and felt the blasting from the mine. Supposedly they blast every ngith between 1:10 and 1:20 am.

Monday, I started the day calling around to see if Dan and I could find an opening to dogsled and see the northern lights that night. Eventually, I found openings, and booked it. We spent the day taking pictures in Kiruna. We saw the famous Kiruna Church, whiched I recognized from class last term. Later that night, Dan and I went dogsledding, which was really cool. What was cooler though, was the northern lights. Very cool green lights, though they weren't quite bright enough to get a good picture (sorry Dad.) We were very lucky, because it had been cloudy all day, but cleared up at night. Again, we finished the night eating frozen pizza.

Tuesday, we actually woke up early. We had to catch our tour to the Icehotel. We took snowmobiles to the Icehotel, which was very fun. I figured out on the lake that my snowmoblie tops out at a slow 56 mph. Bummer. Once at the Icehotel, I took lots of pictures. Its a strange feeling to be somewhere you've seen on tv, and never thought you'd be there yourself. Once we rode back to the camp where we had started with the snowmobiles, we had reindeer and potatos, which is traditional Sami food. The Sami people are the people that lived in Northern Sweden, kinda like eskimos. Once back at the hotel, we had a couple beers and watched tv. We went to a resturant looking for pasta, but they were only serving pizza that late. There seems to be a theme here.....

Anyways, Wednesday, we started the long adventure back to Lund. This time, we were in a six bed room. We had a full room, but Dan and I played cards with a guy we got to know, Nicklas. The next day, we arrived in Lund at about noon.

It was a great trip. Took a little while to get up there, but definatly worth it.