Blogs from Norrbotten County, Sweden, Europe

Hey lieve volgers van mijn reisverhalen! Ik ben nu in Zweden en ben Polarsteps voor het eerst aan het testen. Deze app bevalt me veel beter dan deze website, dus ik verhuis met mijn verhalen en foto's naar Polarsteps! Je kunt de app hiervoor gebruiken, maar ook gewoon via de internetbrowser meelezen. Mijn account is wel privé in Polarsteps, dus de eerste keer zul je even een verzoek om mij te volgen moeten sturen. Je kunt mij vinden op voor- en achternaam. Lukt het niet: app me even. Liefs Afke... read more

My sisters, their families and I took the 15 hour overnight train to the far north of Sweden: Kiruna, 150 km north of the arctic circle. I was actually quite excited for the train ride (I love trains), but a couple of the adults were a bit nervous (I won't say who). We had booked two cabins, each slept 6 people. The 6 kids all enjoyed some cousin time in their own cabin, while the adults played some bean board game two cabins down. We had asked the middle cabin if they wanted to switch, but they were an incomplete group of strangers. The wine came out and we stated to enjoy our time, but the two families were divided come bed time. I made up most of the beds, climbing to the top bunk and ... read more

Sweden's largest rapid, Sweden's largest ghost town, the world's highest wooden house and the world's largest cheese slicer Something we learnt this summer while travelling in northern Sweden is that although there are plenty of rivers in this country there are not many waterfalls. Instead there are plenty of rapids, and they can be pretty spectacular too. We will start this blog entry by writing about the largest rapid in all of Sweden, Storforsen. Storforsen Storforsen, or the Great Rapid, is not only the largest rapid in Sweden. It would rank pretty high on a list of the greatest rapids in Europe as well. The rapid is untouched by the hydro power industry, as is the entire Pite River which is the river that feeds Storforsen. But Storforsen has sort of been regulated by the logging ... read more

An igloo in summer, a battle site in a country that has had peace for more than 200 years and a nature reserve to preserve the aftermath of a nature disaster We decided to stay in Sweden during our vacation this summer. We did the same last year and then we mainly travelled in mid Sweden. This year the plan was to go further north than that because, as we will show in this and in coming blog entries, there is plenty to see there as well. Going from Stockholm to north Sweden by car is a fairly long journey. It's longer than we really want to push ourselves to travel in one go. Fortunately we had some things we wanted to see along the way so we could make stops to break the journey. The ... read more

Friday 4 August - Lulea to Jokkmokk.... another day of travelling - this time train and bus..... also another fine day with a clear blue sky. The train left at 10am and was fairly empty until we arrived in Boden. Crowds of hikers with large backpacks got off the overnight train from Gothenburg - same train we arrived on yesterday - and got on the train we were on - going as far as Kiruna. We got off at the next stop, a small village called Murjek, where we had a 2 hour wait for the bus to Jokkmokk. There was a restaurant in a no-longer-used Teachers' Training College building just up the road, and we headed there to see what we could find for lunch. Friday's menu was curried chicken and rice or potatoes, and ... read more