WHY ME...

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NORTHERN SWEDEN (HAPARANDA) Day 81

I froze all night long on the damn train. At 5am I woke up and went to the bathroom to find out that the whole train wasn’t cold it was just the heater next to my seat that was broken and therefore I was the only one to freeze all night long. Yay me! I get off the train and wait the two hours for the bus to take me to the border of Sweden and Finland where I must get off the bus and walk across the border to the Finland side and get on another bus to take me to another town to catch a train to get me to Rovaniemi to finally see Santa Claus.

So I get my bus and arrive in Haparanda (the border town) at 11am. I walk across the border with no idea where I am going to find the Finish bus station. I couldn’t ask at the Swedish bus station where I got off because it is Sunday and everything is closed. As I walk in the general direction that everyone I asked pointed towards I came across a highway with walking paths running below it. So I thought the walking paths were the better option for walking along rather than the highway. Unfortunately I had to walk across a snow mound to get to these paths. At first sight it didn’t look too deep maybe 1 foot deep. So I begin walking across and all is well when suddenly I sink. I don’t sink a little I sink a lot; I am now waist deep in a pile of dirty old snow. Apparently the snow pile was over top of a ditch of some sort making it remarkably deeper than I thought. Now I am stuck in this pile of snow unable to move because my back pack changes my centre of balance and I can’t get a hold on the snow to drag my self out. Eventually after many minutes of screaming “WHYYYYYYY” and watching many cars fly past me giving me strange looks I drag my self to freedom. Just as I brush all the snow off of me I look up to see a bus fly past me and I see it has ‘Kemi’ (the name of the town where I am heading to in order to catch the train) written across the front. Well by the time I get to the station the bus has departed and I come to realize that because it is Sunday that one bus was the ONLY bus to go to Kemi. Well isn’t that fabulous so now I walk back to the Haparanda side, fuming, and try to track down a hostel to stay the night. I find one but it is closed and won’t open until 4pm, keep in mind it is now noonish. So I try to use my cell phone to call the hostel and it doesn’t seem to want to work here, yay me! So I sit and wait. By 2pm the owner shows up randomly to fix stuff and lets me in. So that is a complete loss of a day but maybe tomorrow will be better.

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Comments

[Mom]

Oh My GOSH
I thought I would take a break and was excited to see a new blog when opening my email. What a horrible day that was for you. Hopefully tomorrow will bring a much better and delightful one. Keep smiling.. your bright eyed smile