Verena Hausmann — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:13:28 +0000

We just came back from a very nice 4 day trip together with another German girl, Andrea, and one Spanish guy, Saul. We started our trip in Turku at 7 p.m. taking the bus to the airport. We wanted to pick up our car there, but nobody was at the desk. So we called the number which was written on a paper and finally one person came (he expected us to come with the next flight). We guess he was a little bit out of his mind and so he forgot to charge us for the third driver and for being under 25 … good for us. As we had to wait for him he gave us a bigger car (double-upgrade) than we ordered and so we got a Mercedes B 180. So we started our at around 8.30 p.m. Around 12 hours later we arrived in Rovaniemi where we wanted to have breakfast in the most Northern McDonald’s in the world. But we were 45 minutes too early and it was closed. So we continued our way, stopped at the Santa Clause Village for a couple of minutes and arrived in Inari at around 1 o’clock in the afternoon.

Day 1
As we were hungry we went to Siida, the Sami museum to have lunch. After that we drove to our hostel in Kaamanen. There we had the possibility to get cross-country skis for free. The sizes of the shoes did not fit all of us so that we drove to the next “shop” 1.5km away to rent one more skis. In the evening we then had our first cross-country ski experience in Lapland. After that we drove to Inari to get some ice cream and relaxed at home. We went outside for a couple of times to see if we can see the Northern Lights, but as it was snowing so there was no chance to see them that night.

Day 2
We got up early because we wanted to drive to Norway and the arctic see on that day. The border to Norway was not very impressive, but the countryside changed completely. We drove along a very nice valley with little mountains and finally came to a point where we could see the arctic see. It wasn’t frozen and there were more snowy mountains around there. It was really nice to see. We then also saw reindeers in the countryside and fishing areas within the sea. We drove along the coastline for a while and enjoyed it a lot. Back in our hostel we cooked Spaghettis and decided to go out for cross-country skiing again. This itself was not a problem, but we decided to go into another direction than the day before. We were thinking that we were skiing on a lake, but later we found out that it was a river. As it started to get dark we decided to go away from the snowmobile tracks were you can easily ski and cross a few trees to get to the other side of the ‘lake’ and go back there. That was a bad decision. Once away from the track we sunk into the snow up to our hips. It was not possible to go on with the skis and we tried to crawl. It was really hard and took us hours. We finally made our way back to the hostel. This night we again drove the 60 km to Inari and back to get ice cream J. We furthermore had a look at the Inari lake in the night because we were hoping to have a better chance to see the Northern Lights from there. But even though we saw stars in this night we could not see anything else.

Day 3 and 4
It was a really nice and sunny day. We had to pack our stuff in the morning. After that we drove to the Inari lake to do cross-country skiing on it. It is amazingly big and really beautiful. At around 2 o’clock we again had lunch at the Sami museum. We than had to bring back our skis. On this way we saw a lot of reindeers. Some were lying on the river and others were standing on the street and not going away … But we then actually made our way and went into the museum we up to now just had lunch in. It was interesting and explained things about the Sami culture and the different animals and times of the year in that area. At around 6 we started our way back to Turku. On our way just a couple of kilometers before Ivalo we saw a wild spirit park. On a sign it said that it is open every day until 8. But another sign said closed and had a telephone number on it. Luckily we called that number and 10 minutes later a woman came. She kind of did a tour with us and showed us the 32 sled dogs (not many huskies) they had. She knew the name and race of every single dog and explained us a lot. She also showed us a raccoon-dog, a red fox, a polar fox, wild pigs, a ferret, etc. It was really cool! After that we continued our way back home. We always looked out of the car window to hopefully see some lights, but nothing. We arrived in Rovaniemi at 11:20 and now were early enough to have dinner at the McDonald’s before it closed at midnight. We went out further South and then finally saw some blue/green lights. We stopped at a lake to have it dark around us. And really, yes we could see some northern lights. But we have to say that they were not very bright or colorful this night and so it wasn’t really spectacular. After another long drive in the car we finally arrived Turku on Monday at midday.

In total we drove 3204 km which took us 42:37 hours.

Verena Hausmann — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:06:25 +0000

I know we are crazy, but as we haven’t seen wild living reindeers or the northern light the last time we were in Lapland we are getting a car tonight and driving up there ones more. Together with Andrea, a German girl and Saul a Spanish guy this will be lots of fun. So we have around 1250km lying before us for this night! You will get to know more about this trip after we are back on Monday evening.

Verena Hausmann — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 17:41:53 +0000

On our long way back we stopped at the snow castle in Kemi for about an hour. It is a building completely made from snow and ice – well, almost. The lights, etc., are not from ice of course You walk into the castle through a long tunnel-like path with high snow walls that is guarded by a monster through whose mouth one walks in.

Within it looks bigger than from the outside an features a big courtyard from which one can reach the hotel (the core of the castle), a lookout and a stage. The topic of this year’s castle is cartoons. Therefore, the stage is framed by Mummins and every step within the castle is guarded by cartoon figures. Some of these are Lucky Luke, Mickey Mouse and Snoopy with the rest of the Peanuts (of course). The bar is protected by Batman and Robin against their fierce enemies. It’s pretty funny walking around and seeing all this.

Guests can stay at one of the guest rooms the castle has (simple bed rooms of varying sizes) where you sleep under reindeer skin as far as we’ve seen. You’d probably need this at the constant -5°C they maintain in the building. Also, a chapel has found its place within the castle.

Verena Hausmann — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 17:41:24 +0000

On our last day in Levi we again went skiing/snowboarding. It snowed the whole night before so that the slopes were kind of covert and we had the feeling of going deep snow skiing. Also during the day it went on snowing, but the view was a little bit better than on Thursday… Today we were even able to see the trees beside the slope

But, with -20°C on the top of the mountain and a very strong wind it was freezingly cold. We all had the ice on our face and actually the water within our bag got completely frozen. We skied until 4 and after a short shopping tour in the center we went back to our cottage and had a nice and warm sauna to recover.

Johannes H. Glitsch — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 21:04:07 +0000

The highlight of the day was the husky safari. The bus took us and 40 others to a husky ‘park’. We were divided into three groups that took a short trip of about 3 km one after the other. Again, one would be the driver in one direction and the other would drive back. That was loads of fun … and very impressive to see how much energy the dogs have. If you forgot to push the break down they’d just run as fast as they could. We didn’t really have to steer though, because the dogs were trained to follow the lead sled, i.e. our job was mainly to keep balance, break and help turn a little. But still, that was very nice

Johannes H. Glitsch — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 20:38:51 +0000

We tried snowshoes this morning. It’s pretty nice to walk this way. There are winter walking tracks that are really nice and give a nice view over the landscape. And we had blue sky and lots of sun.

Johannes H. Glitsch — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:22:17 +0000

Aside from the skiing we did today we had a great snowmobile drive. With a group of about 40 people we got one snowmobile for every two persons. Each person could drive for about 40 minutes. One drove to a reindeer farm and one back. The path went through the forest, over bridges (acting as barriers for the reindeers on the farm) and through some nice open spots. It was rather complicated to drive, because the snowmobile does not act like a car or a motorbike, but rather like a sled. Therefore it would follow the tracks of the others and sometimes just go straight … Nevertheless our maximum speed was about 70 km/h at one point.

Johannes H. Glitsch — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:00:22 +0000

Today we left our cottage at about 9 am. We actually got the gear yesterday evening already to be at the lifts just about when they open. At the beginning it was about -6°C at the base, but during the day it went down to about -8°C. Up on the top of the ‘hill’ we had -12°C. The wind was so cold up there that it could easily have been rather -20°C. Towards the afternoon it turned pretty foggy. And we had to fight the cold and ice, because our goggles froze over pretty quickly. We had to clean them like two times for every run. But, the skiing/snowboarding was simply great. The skiing resort is just nice. It has a great scenery and lots of good snow. Well, and lots of different slopes Just fun.

Good line of sight at the slope (Levi)

Johannes H. Glitsch — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 21:36:31 +0000

We actually got to meet Santa today. That’s because Finland ist Santa’s home. His house is located right next to a town called Rovaniemi and at the same time it’s right on the arctic circle … Well, anyway there’s several houses there. There’s also Santa’s post office. But aside from the fact that it’s all about Santa it’s not that interesting. It’s pretty small and super-touristy. We stayed there for about two hours, which is plenty of time to see it all and have a picture taken with Santa. Well, nice to see because we were passing it anyway …

Johannes H. Glitsch — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 13:33:42 +0000

After a journey of about 17 hrs (15 hrs of driving) we are finally in our cottage. As you probably notice we do have internet We started yesterday evening at about 8.30 pm. Aside from smaller break we stopped at the Santa Claus Village for about 2 hrs to take a photo with Santa and to look around. And we saw some reindeers (even though not any wild ones). We’ll tell you more later. We need to organize some stuff now.