On Monday the 4^th of January I started an Interrail trip to the Northern parts of Sweden and Norway. The trip was intended to last for about 10 days and should lead me from Stockholm to Luleå, further to Narvik in Norway and from there to the Lofoten islands.

I took an overnight train to Luleå. The ride lasted about 12 hours and I bought myself a reservation in a laying cabin. The bed was hard and did not come with a pillow. Apart from some noisy teenagers, the ride was quite nice. I arrived in Luleå at half past 8 a.m., one and a half hours late. For my first day, I intended to explore the town a little before I would meet my host at half past 4 p.m. But first of all, I had breakfast at the rail station and then changed to windproof trousers; it had about minus 20 degrees Celsius outside plus slight wind. I could not find a locker at the rail station but I got lucky at the bus station just across the street. After storing my backpack, I started walking around the city. There was not a lot to see. The frozen Baltic Sea offered a nice platform of ice and the church in the center is remarkable. The church is completely held in orange which made it appearing quite fancy.

Anyhow, after two hours of walking I felt very cold and so I looked out for a café. There are several along the main street and I decided to take a seat in one of them. I ordered hot chocolate and started taking notes. Usually I want to bring my impressions and thoughts to paper in order to be able to recall them later. Time went by and it turned lunchtime. I ate lunch at the café before I walked to the Sami museum. The Sami are an ethnical minority in the Northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. They are considered as one of the first settlers in the Northern part of Scandinavia. The Sami museum shows how they life and a lot of their culture, i.e. music, food, hunting and so forth. The exhibition was held in two rooms and it was nice but not overwhelming. In addition to the Sami stuff, the museum had various minor exhibitions on societal topics, such as women’s rights, child labor, terrorism and others. An association called ‘Good 50 x 70’ encourages young art designers, mainly students, to hand in their work. A selection of the collected work is then exhibited. A link to the association’s homepage can be found below. Anyhow, I quite enjoyed the exhibitions. Finally, it turned 4 p.m. and, thus, it was time to meet my host.

My hosts turned out to be a very hospitable couple in their early thirties. They got a really nice apartment which is about a 10 minutes car ride outside of Luleå. Their neighborhood turned out to be a typical Scandinavian block house village. The houses have all different colors and shapes but they are all built the same way. In the sun light they appeared to be like a postcard motive. Anyhow, my hosts had a really nice guest room prepared for me with my own bed. For the first evening of my stay, they had planned a little reunion party with some of their older friends who were not living in Luleå anymore. The party was great! We sat on the kitchen talking about different subjects such as traveling, cultures, lifestyle, Stockholm and so on. It was very nice to hear the opinion on those topics from people in the Northern part, 1100 kilometers from Stockholm. And, I could understand their Swedish much better than in Stockholm. They speak a bit slower and just a tick more accurately. The party guests encouraged me to speak Swedish and so I even got a Swedish lesson far North late at night.

The next day we hung out in the apartment and later in the day I went outside to see the neighborhood. The Baltic Sea was deeply frozen and one could walk on the ice. There were many snow mobiles around, on the ice of the Baltic Sea, on the streets and on snow fields on grassland. The snow mobile seems to be the main vehicle at this time of the year. Other than cars, it does not need any external support to start the engines. After turning off the engine of a car, the owner would keep an engine warmer running which is fed by electricity. One cannot see the engine warmer from outside and the cars are usually equipped with a socket at the front to plug the engine warmer to the electricity grid. The engine warmer is intended to keep the engine at an appropriate temperature so that the engine can be turned on without any problems. At temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius or even below one might experience problems starting a completely cold car engine. Another, not very environmentally friendly, solution is to keep the engine running, what many people do while they go shopping.

The sun actually never came completely above the horizon. This is because of the winter season and Luleå is located almost at sea level. It was very bright for about 3 to 4 hours a day, so not a lot of natural light during the day. However, I enjoyed walking around in my host’s neighborhood.

Later in the day, we drove to Boden, a town about 35 kilometers west. From there, we went another 15 kilometers to one of my hosts’ parents’ house. There, the mum of one of my hosts had cooked us dinner. The dinner consisted of meat balls in a creamy sauce, backed potatoes and roasted vegetables. Therewith we had homemade bread with butter. So, all in all it was a typical Swedish dinner which was of excellent taste! But the food was not the only positive surprise for that evening. My hosts arranged a snow mobile ride for me. I had not ridden a snow mobile before so that was very special for me. One of my hosts’ nephews gave me a quick introduction on how to steer a snow mobile. Then, we took a short ride together. We went along the street first and then went on some untouched snow where we jumped over a little ramp. After that, I was allowed to steer the vehicle on my own. The cold air was pushing against my face and I could hardly see anything but the feeling was great. Riding a snow mobile is really fun and I can strongly recommend trying it out.

Later, we picked up my hosts’ pet, a pig. The pig has a disease so that it will not grow and gain weight. Thus, it is rather uninteresting for a farmer to keep it but easy to keep it as a pet. My hosts had heard about that and brought the pig home. The pig is always moving around in the apartment but sometimes it naps on the couch. It is quite clean and one could not smell that the pig was living in the apartment too. After collecting the pig, we drove back to my hosts’ apartment.

For the next morning I had planned to get on a train to Narvik in Norway. The train left late at half past 10 a.m. after some trouble with one wagon. The train ride was really nice. It led through Swedish Lappland and one could see a lot of snow, needle trees and a few villages and towns – like in my imaginations of the ‘far North’. On that day, I could even see the sun. The sun appeared as a glowing disk just a little above the horizon. The train ride lasted for about 8 hours and so I arrived around half past 5 p.m. in Narvik. There, I met my host at the rail station. We went to his apartment in the center of Narvik and set down around the couch. My host served cookies and tea and we started talking about traveling, the history of Norway and other topics. After about two hours we went for dinner to an Italian restaurant close by my host’s apartment. I ordered a pizza there which was held relatively simple and came in a medium size but was 100 Norwegian crowns, roughly 12 Euros. Yepp, prices in Norway can be quite shocking!

After dinner, we continued talking a bit. I found out that the Northern lights would not be visible in two weeks and that the weather forecast predicted snowfall and even rain. That news kind of killed my travel spirit. I had planned to see the Northern lights on the Lofoten islands and to hike there for a bit. Both would not work then and so I decided to go back to Stockholm and save my money for another trip to Norway. In addition, there was not spectacular to do in Narvik or the surrounding. The next day, I got on a train towards Stockholm. It was supposed to be an 18 and half hours ride but it turned out to last more than 21 hours until I would arrive in Stockholm. Hence, I finally got to get off the train at around 12 a.m. on Saturday the 10^th of January. For that time, I could not stay on any train for longer. However, I quite enjoyed my trip even though it took an unexpected, earlier end. And, coming back home does still always feel very nice.

Links:

Good 50 x 70 on Facebook

Photos of the trip on Flickr