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Published: June 14th 2011
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Kiruna
Townhall So here we are again,
After we left Abisko national park we kept on driving as close to Lulea as possible. On our way down South we stopped in Kiruna about 100km from Abisko national park, an industrial town known for its iron ore. It has a very recognizable church completly built out of wood. We had a look in town and the senior year of secondary school were celebrating their graduation in a very peculiar way. Every class got his own truck with banners, they were drinking alcohol, shouting stuff, very amusing.
We bought some postcards and returned to our car. Just outside Kiruna we found a sign towards the ice hotel that is built there every winter. We lost the sign but we found a very quiet place to sit and have some lunch at a riverside. We met a German couple, retired and enjoying nature for a few months. We filled our bottles of water in the river, had some food and kept going.
The landscape changed quite quickly while we were going down south. At around 8pm it was still 31°C and time for another pit stop. This time we were very close to the Arctic
Kiruna
Wooden church Polar Circle. Next to a lake we found a wooden house with a campfire and there we met them for the first time: Midges. Tiny biting flies, you don't feel it at first but afterwards, aj aj. Itchy and scratchy :-) Besides the midges we encountered mosquitos. Luckily I brought enough deet with me to kill an army of mosquitos. Still they managed to bite us where we didn't put deet,
We made a bunfire to keep the insects away, had some tin food and kept going. Next stop the Arctic Polar Circle. Nothing much to see besides a sign pointing the distance to some important cities in the world and again our new enemy: midges and mosquitos :-)
Just when we drove of southwards we passed a moose farm with ... moose in a meadow. Woohoo finally moose, not really in the wilderness but pretty close.
They were very curious animals, we even got the chance to pet them.
I was a very happy person :-D
Back in the car and just in the car and ... a deer family crossed the road from one part of the forest to the other on the other side of the road.
Kiruna
inside the church Waauw again. We stopped the car in the middle of the car and I got the chance to take some pictures. Mission completed: see moose and rudolf the rednosed reindeer :-), the only thing missing was Santa :-)
Our final distination for today was a camping site just outside of Lulea called Rörbäck. We arrived there round midnight, were even more eaten by mosquitos so we quickly put our tent and went to bed.
We got up quite early, found someone at reception, paid for a shower (it was the first time in 4 days we had to pay for a camping site) had breakfast and kept going.
Just outside Lulea we found a place called Gammelstad, it's the old town with typcial red wooden houses, listed on the Unesco World Heritage list.
We walked around for a bit and got back to Lulea. We had to bring back the car before 3pm. First we located the train and bus station. Because the bus was more expensive than the train, we wanted to take the train. We brought back the car, packed our stuff and had to take a taxi to the train station cause we had just missed the
Kiruna
Senior year celebrating graduation bus.
It was Saturday, no ticket office open at the train station in a city with 75000 inhabitants. So this is what privatisation of rail looks like. One machine that didn't want to except our visa card and the price of the tickets that was more expensive just before the train took off than 2 hours before.
We didn't have a ticket, I explained to the conductor that we were belgian colleagues and if it would be possible to pay on the train. No problem, have a seat, there were some empty seats left and so we took off, towards Umea.
Our plan was to go to Umea, stay with a couchsurfing host there and afterwards continue towards the South. The distance we had to overcome to our final destination by the 15the of June in Nyköping was at that moment more than 1000km.
Something went wrong with the host's accomodation and so we ended up in the train with no place to stay in Umea. I contacted my host in Stockholm to ask if we could stay once more at her house and so we changed our travel plans.
We explained our situation to our Swedish colleagues and they
allowed us to travel all the way to Stockholm with them. The goodies from Belgium I got for the lady in Umea, I gave to the staff on the train and 15hours later, we were back in Stockholm.
Tomorrow June 15 we will travel to Nyköping, 1hour of train to the south of Stockholm to start another week of camping, with no car this time. Antoine contacted a youth hostel next to the train station and they allow us to keep our luggage, we don't need until we go back home.
I'm really curious how that will go.
Till soon for some more adventure stories :-)
Take care,
Ann and Antoine
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