Today we shall drink

A woman here told me yesterday, “Just when you have completely given up, just when you think the sun will never shine again, just when you believe spring is just a figment of your imagination, yes, that is when spring will come.” My question is does spring come when she has given up or when I have given up…because I think I am already there!!! But, enough about the weather….

I had what I feel is my first truly Finnish experience this past weekend at a ski resort called Ruka in Lapland (northern Finland in the Arctic Circle). We had our local office outing there and spent Friday in teams of colleagues competing in events like ice sculpting, fire building, tug of war in 3 feet of snow, and snow football (European football!) also in 3 feet of snow. (I was told that they also have “swamp football” here where you play in deep mud pits – these people are loco! I’m hoping they haven’t come up with these crazy activities because they just never see normal grass.) The activities were a blast – you would be shocked at what a novice can sculpt from a chunk of ice! They were also absolutely exhausting. I thought the tug of war might kill me! My entire team ended up laid out on the snow, still holding on to the rope, entirely beaten and ultimately just getting dragged around. I forgot to mention that we were also tasked with dressing up in 80’s gear for this event. Have you ever seen an 80’s rock band big hair wig paired with a one piece woman’s ski outfit which is mauve with panels of hideous flowers (think dentist office wallpaper flowers – yikes!)…on a man?! It wasn’t pretty but it was definitely hilarious.

Naturally, after being outside in the cold for several hours, one must enjoy the sauna and most especially when in Finland! I had read before I came here that there is a sauna in Finland for every 2.5 people and, at this point, I think that sounds like too few! There is a sauna in my gym, at my client’s headquarters, in my apartment building (to reserve), and in every (or nearly every) Finnish home. One of the consultants on my case is building a house and she was showing me the floor plans the other day – a big sauna was featured prominently. In fact, they had removed part of the originally planned bathroom and one of the closets to make their sauna bigger. (I like saunas but don’t think I could deal with giving up the closet space – valuable real estate for more shoes!) The sauna was great, especially after being partially frozen for four hours of activities in the snow, and it was made even better by bringing a beer (cider for me) along. I learned the hard way that I better drink it fast though…those glass bottles will literally burn your lips after 10 minutes in the sauna at 90°C (194°F)! The things that never cross your mind…

After a lovely sauna we all went to dinner for a very traditional Finnish meal of mushroom soup, reindeer with ligonberry sauce over potatoes, and a dessert of some kind of fried sweet cheese (sounds horrible but was really good!)…and, in true Finnish form, copious amounts of alcohol. I had been warned about Finnish drinking habits but had not really witnessed it first hand until this weekend.

Stereotype 1: The Finns can drink every other nation of people under the table.
The verdict: TRUE (although Germans give them a good run for their money!)

Stereotype 2: Finns are quiet and keep to themselves until they start drinking in which case they are loud, outgoing, and crazy drunks.
The verdict: TRUE The guys who have been walking by me eyes-straight-ahead in the office for more than two months, rarely acknowledging and thoroughly confused by my chirpy “Good morning!” which is seen as annoyingly American (as my client said this week, “Why do you need to ask ‘How are you?’ when you see someone at work? It just wastes time.”), just needed a little (or a lot for some, as it turned out) vodka to open the floodgates. I got more conversation in an hour with a vodka bottle on the table than I’ve had in the last several weeks in the office!

Stereotype 3: Finns drink Finlandia vodka, preferably with a horrible anise (licorice) flavor.
The verdict: FALSE Finns don’t drink Finlandia – I was informed that the name is just a silly marketing and branding tool used around the world for those who don’t know any better. A true Finn drinks only Koskenkorva vodka. Clearly. They love this vodka so much that they have multiple traditional drinking songs calling this specific vodka out by name. (You don’t want to mess this up in Finland. I mean, Finlandia vodka? Really? Are you crazy?!)

What I had not been warned about or prepared for were the Finnish drinking songs. We were eating our very civilized dinner of reindeer and ligonberries, behaving well and sipping wine, when one person stood up and began to sing. We had about 40 people with us and everyone immediately stopped eating and joined in. While I obviously didn’t know the song I was smart enough to know that a vodka shot was coming up (tipped off by the wait staff jumping up when the song began to pour a round – context clues!) so I was able to participate correctly at the end of the very first song by taking my shot with the group. However, I noticed the guy next to me only sipped his shot (considered bad form in Finland as I was told by all the others). Turns out he knew what was coming….this was the first of what I think was easily 1o+ songs over the course of two hours, most of which involving some banging of the table during the singing part and at the end of which you are supposed to drink (preferably a vodka shot). Thankfully, I had an excellent translator sitting next to me and, after the third or fourth song (each sung by someone new in the group standing up at random times and just belting it out), a theme emerged…”…tobacco, whiskey, and wild women…,” “…It’s great to be really, really, really, really drunk!,” “Koskenkorva!,” “Tomorrow will be one hell of a hangover” The crazy thing was that everyone knew every song. Finns are also known for being very efficient and I can certainly vouch for that here. Many people made significant “progress” over those two hours…the group’s collective social skills probably improved 10X!

Tänään otetaan
Tänään otetaan, tänään otetaan,
helvetin paljon viinaa
Huomenna on, huomenna on,
helvetin kova krapula

I dag ska vi ta, i dag ska vi ta,
helvete mycket brännvin
I morgon ska vi ha, i morgon ska vi ha,
helvete kova krapula

Today we shall drink (sung first in Finnish, then in Swedish)
Today we shall drink, today we shall drink
A hell of a lot of booze
Tomorrow will be, tomorrow will be
One hell of a hangover

Elomme päivät epäselvät
Elomme päivät epäselvät,
kohtalo kovan suonut on.
Kun eilen tulin tänään kotia
ja tänään tulen huomenna.
HUOMENTA!

The date is unclear (about coming home each morning after a big night out)
The days of our life are unclear,
brought us an unfortunate fate.
Yesterday I came home today
and today I'll come tomorrow
GOOD MORNING!

Koskenkorva
Nostakaamme malja koskenkorvaa on.
Väljähtyköön kalja mallaskelvoton.
Riemuella suo, siispä Veikko juo.
Riemuella suo, siispä Veikko juo.

Kalja voimallansa meitä innostaa.
Koskenkorvan kanssa mielet nostattaa.
Lohdutusta suo, siispä Veikko juo.
Lohdutusta suo, siispä Veikko juo.

Koskenkorva
Let's raise a toast of Koskenkorva
Bad quality beer can stay in the glass
It brings us happiness, so Buddy drinks
It brings us happiness, so Buddy drinks

Beer inspires us with its strength
Koskenkorva arouses our minds
It brings us consolation, so Buddy drinks
It brings us consolation, so Buddy drinks

After dinner we went to a concert of one of Finland’s more famous bands, a pair of girls singing some sort of pop / punk music. First of all, we arrived at this club and the DJ was playing The Bangles' “Eternal Flame.” I like that song but thought it a little strange at a club. The next song was something by Michael Jackson and the next was one of the songs from Grease! Interesting choices but the Finns were going crazy and loving it. Finns are apparently very in to 80’s music. Then the band came out. I don’t want to be rude but they were absolutely terrible! It was described to me (by a Finn who also was not impressed) as “the equivalent of a pair of Bjorks but without the talent.” Ouch. One of their most famous songs had some line in it which was translated to me as, “Even swans get their legs frozen in the lake sometimes.” Only in Finland, my friends, only in Finland.

In the midst of the cacophony that was the famous band, an older man approached me speaking Finnish. I gave my standard, “I’m sorry. I only speak English.” He said, “Oh! You are from California!” I said, “Wow – you are good! Yes, I just moved to Helsinki.” He said, “I used to live in New York. You have a slight San Francisco accent.” “WOW. That is quite amazing! I don’t think an American could tell that!” He looked at me and replied, “Yes…I saw you on the plane this morning….” OK, starting to get creeped out now! I skedaddled out of that conversation only to get caught in up in another one, this time with a younger guy. I can only loosely refer to it as a conversation as he spoke almost no English which, to a sober person, would be a major deterrent. Lucky for me, this guy was not remotely near sober so he was happy as a clam to exhaust his few English phrases and questions over and over again, “You are 25.” Um, not quite, but I’ll take it! “Where you from?” “How long you in Helsinki?” “Maybe I see you tonight?” “How long you in Helsinki?” “Where you from?” “You from US.” “You from US?” Add this kind of stimulating conversation to the fact that the entire club was swaying in drunken unison (and, seemingly, leaning or stepping on me) and this guy was trying to hold my hand with the Finnish alternachicks screaming the soundtrack in the background…I had had enough!

Thankfully, I had been smart enough not to drink too much the night before because I had really wanted to go cross-country skiing on Saturday. Given how things turned out – this was a very lucky decision the night before! I set out with a couple women from the office and we made our way to the lodge to rent equipment. Cross-country skiing in Finland is a bit more sophisticated than what I had done before in Idaho. There is “traditional” cross-country skiing which is the type I was familiar with, leisurely skiing through the mostly flat forest. There is also “freestyle” cross-country skiing which is very popular here and basically looks like skating on skis, which they do both up and down quite steep hills. In fact, fairly steep hills are part of all cross-country skiing here which was something new to me (great workout going up but scary speed coming down!).

Freestyle takes a bit of finesse and time to learn so we all opted to go traditional. We got outfitted with our equipment and set off to do a 16 km “easy” loop meaning that it had relatively few hills. I had just gone cross-country skiing the previous weekend in Sweden at the Ice Hotel and it was a relaxing and refreshing experience. There was nobody else around and the weather had been perfect – it was great! The weather in Ruka was also perfect and sunny but the calm of the remote forest in northern Sweden was replaced with “advanced” ski paths of many expert-level skiers who routinely passed me climbing up the hills (quite steep so had to duck-walk up) as well as coming down them. I, by no stretch an expert cross-country skier on flat courses let alone the hills common to these, was struggling with my newly waxed skis (if you don’t walk enough like a duck you start sliding back down the mountain!) and getting comfortable going down the steep hills all the while Finnish senior citizens were putting me to shame and passing me like I was standing still. My problem with skiing in general is that I get nervous going too fast but in regular downhill skiing I just add additional turns to slow myself down to feel comfortable. This time I was strapped to skis pointing straight down a mountain in groomed, very smooth and very fast tracks without any good way to slow down or deviate from the “fast track.” I took a couple spills not because I lost my balance but because I got scared of going so fast and decided that crashing into a snow bank seemed like the preferred option!

I did get my downhill / cross-country skiing legs after a bit and once we were away from the ski lodge the number of other people sharing the path really subsided. I stopped briefly to look at the map with Emma and Satu and we found our loop and set out. I didn’t pay much attention to the map because I couldn’t read anything (and, somewhat baffling, because none of the ski routes matched anything printed on the map – very frustrating for a non-Finnish reader!) but I figured that I didn’t really need to because Emma and Satu were leading and we would be moving together. Besides, the tracks are groomed – how can you really get lost on groomed, well-marked trails?

We took off and about 10 minutes later, because of the hills, were fairly spread out from one another by about 50-100m. I got to a fork in the road and hurried right after a group of people I could see in front of me. I skied for about 20 minutes but had not yet caught up to Emma or Satu, despite having turned it up a bit to try to catch up after a long hill climb up. We had seen a coffee hut on the map about 40 minutes out so I figured that they would at least wait for me there if I wasn’t able to catch up by then. About 40 minutes later I arrived at an igloo with a couple doors in it (guarded by a gigantic snowman, bigger than the igloo) but no one was around. Was this the coffee hut which just didn’t happen to be open? I looked around a bit but figured that the girls had just passed by since it wasn’t open and I took off again, really turning up the speed this time. Stupidly, I hadn’t brought my phone with me because, again, why would I need one if I was with two others who had theirs? At some point I realized that I had taken the wrong turn at the fork but the paths are all “one-way” (you can go the other way but get ready for Finnish death stares) and so were almost all loops. I decided that I would just stay on my loop to avoid going against traffic. It was a bummer that I was on my own but I was on a well-marked path which surely looped back to where I had taken the wrong turn. I figured things would be fine if not optimal.

We had roughly calculated that it was taking us about 10 minutes per kilometer so we should be done with the loop and back at the lodge in about 2.5 hours. I happily skied and skied away for the next couple hours. Unfortunately, I had nothing to eat and only half of a Coke Zero in my coat pocket to drink as I had been counting on the warming hut for some coffee and lunch. After a couple hours, I was hungry and could have used a bathroom but there was literally not a single place to stop along the way and, if I did stop to take a break, my fingers would begin to freeze. It was better to just keep going to stay warm. The route was beautiful – weaving in and out of the woods and over a frozen lake – and I felt comfortable because the path was so well groomed and I saw markers periodically along the way. I came to another fork in the path but one side was blocked off with a big yellow and red road-barrier with a Finnish sign posted on it. I obviously couldn’t read the sign but the barrier itself carried a pretty obvious message so I continued on along the other path. After hour 3 I began to get a little worried but I kept skiing on. I mean, this was a one-way loop. It must come back around, right? I finally got to what seemed to be a highway crossing and, as it was getting later on in the day and I was getting more nervous about getting back, I waited until another skier came along to confirm that I was heading in the right direction. “Hi! Is this the way to Ruka?” “Ruka? No, no. Kuusamo! Ruka is other way.” I stood there silently as he crossed the highway on his way to Kuusamo. Kuusamo is the city we flew into…and then took a 30 minute bus ride from to get to the resort. ! Apparently, I had somehow chosen the one non-loop option available and was on a straight track to Kuusamo! I turned around and started heading back, going a few kilometers before I thought about what I was doing. It had taken me nearly 4 hours to get to this point. There was no way I could make it back before dark and I was already pretty tired and had twisted my knee somewhere along the way so wasn’t as efficient as I should have been. I turned back around and re-skied the few kilometers back to the highway. I had seen a couple bus stop signs there and it was the best place to catch a fellow skier. My plan was to ask one of them when they stopped to cross the highway (you had to take off your skis to do this) if they had a cell phone and could help call me a taxi. In the meantime, I could stand at the bus stop and wait for a bus to come around. I had just seen some the last time I was at the intersection.

I got to the highway and tried to stop several skiers…only to find out that I had somehow crossed the line from Finland to rural Finland in the last 4 hours and now no one spoke English, and I mean none. My plan to borrow a phone was quickly becoming less and less likely. I stood at the bus stop but my hands were going numb and while I didn’t know what time it was (no watch either) I did notice that the sun was going down. It was already cold enough to hurt if I wasn’t moving and it was easily -20°C or colder when the sun went down. I was definitely up a creek now. For someone who is always well or over-prepared I must have had a brain freeze that morning and was in trouble this time – I had left the house with half a Coke Zero, a credit card, and two lip glosses for the day! What a dummy! I didn’t know where I was, I couldn’t speak to the few people that passed by, I was already freezing and the sun was going down, and I was exhausted, hungry, and had hurt my knee. It was then that I remembered the guys telling me the night before about the bears and wolves in the area. Yikes! What an incredible dummy I was!

The only bus that came by didn’t stop at the sign and I started to weigh my options. Do I go flag someone down on the highway? I had seen a couple police cars earlier. Do I just keep taking my chances with the other skiers? Do I suck it up and ski my way all the back? None of these options seemed that great but desperate times call for desperate measures….

So, I decided to hitchhike. The highway intersected with another road which I knew was heading back to Ruka. I stood at the bus stop (really just a bus sign on the road) and tried to get myself psyched up to hitchhike and hoping a bus would come along in the next 5 minutes so I wouldn’t have to. I had two issues to overcome. First, everybody knows that hitchhikers are all serial killers which, at the time that I was a hitchhiker, I somehow twisted into that it was actually the people picking up the hitchhikers who were the maniacs. However, I told myself, you are in Lapland of all places! You can leave your purse on the street in Helsinki (I still wouldn’t do it but I have seen it done!) without fear of it being stolen so you can definitely hitch a ride in the middle of nowhere Finland and be ok. Secondly, hitchhiking is embarrassing. I was mortified standing out on some random road in my pink coat with my skis on my shoulder and my thumb in the air. I felt totally rejected when a car would pass by me. “Why don’t they like me? Don’t they think I look safe? What’s wrong with me?” After a couple rejections, I was so discouraged that I just couldn’t make myself try for the next car. My ego was too bruised. (Why didn’t they pick me up? I would pick me up! Ok, honestly, I probably wouldn’t pick anyone up!) I decided that a bruised ego would just leave me as a popsicle at the end of the night and that I better get a strategy and suck it up already. My strategy was to target vehicles with single men (single as in only one, not single as in available). I reasoned that the families typically wouldn’t have room in their vehicles and few parents would pick up a stranger and sit him / her next to their children (let alone teach their kids that picking up hitchhikers is ok!). Women driving alone are just less likely to pick up hitchhikers in general, I decided. A single male driver is the hitchhiking sweet spot.

I put my thumb in the air and threw my arm out in front of the next single male driver I saw and, to my great relief and surprise, he immediately slowed down and pulled over. He put his window down and I said, “Thank you! Do you speak English?” He said shyly, “No, no…no.” This could be interesting. I said, “I need to go to Ruka. Ruka?” He replied, “Ruka? *pause* OK!” then jumped out of his van, took my skis and poles, loaded them in the back, removed some things from the passenger seat, and welcomed me in. This guy was probably around 45, was pretty weathered from working outside (I assume, we obviously didn’t talk about it), and was missing some teeth but I could have kissed him. We rode to Ruka in complete silence (the Finnish “no need for small talk” thing is actually very helpful in certain situations) and after about 10 minutes or so he pulled right up to the ski lodge, looked at me for the first time the whole trip and said, “Ok?” I nodded yes and he jumped out to unload my skis. He handed them to me and I said, “Kiitos, kiitos, kiitos!!! Thank you!” (“Kiitos” means “thank you” in Finnish.) He smiled and drove away. Again, I could have kissed him.

I started walking back to our cabin, knowing that people would be worried at this point, and ran into some people from the office. They said that Emma was quite worried and had already been calling around asking if certain rangers had seen me. The plan was to send out the dogs (or snowmobiles, in this case) to find me around 4pm. I think I got back around 3:30pm and everyone was very relieved. Nobody wanted to make the, “San Francisco, we have a problem.” phone call! Emma was worried that I would be angry and traumatized and I said, “How can I be angry when I am the one who took the wrong turn and only brought lip gloss?!” One of the guys told me, “Well, at least you didn’t ski over the Russian border – then you’d really be in trouble!” (We were actually quite close to Russia – yikes!) I got some good laughs about having to hitchhike home too. Definitely never thought I’d do that in this life!

We pulled out the map and figured out that the path which had been blocked off was the loop back to the lodge and the sign said in Finnish that it was closed to snowmobiles. The cross-country skiers (who knew where they were going!) just went around the barricade and continued on back the lodge. Because I had gone straight instead of turning off here, I was on a bee-line to Kuusamo with the locals - no loop and no English. Emma and Satu had actually seen me take the first wrong turn and tried to catch up to me but got slowed down a few times and, ultimately, turned around when they couldn’t catch me (at the same time I had assumed they were in front of me so was really pushing it). All in all, we calculated that I skied about 30 kilometers, nearly double what we had planned on when we set out for the day. I had wanted a good workout and I think I got more than I bargained for this time!

Not easily discouraged, I went back out the next day (although no one would go with me this time – Emma and Satu were gone and everyone else was scared!). I paid close attention to the map and brought my phone along this time, in addition to the lip glosses. I got just under 20 kilometers in that day and was only lost for about 3 of them – somehow I got messed up on the final track home from the loop. One of the Finns told me that he also was having problems with the route maps which made me feel a lot better! So, several shots of vodka, a few rounds of sauna, 50 km of cross-country skiing, and one desperate hitchhike later, my very Finnish weekend was over. I am going to need some time, and maybe survival skills training, before the next one!

Running down a dream

Just when you probably thought I was on the edge and would have to chase the sun somewhere south, I go and spend the weekend even further north…at the Ice Hotel in Sweden! Not only did I choose to go to the Arctic Circle, I chose to pay dearly (I do not even want to do the conversion from Swedish kronor to dollars) for the privilege to spend the night on a bed literally made of ice. The Ice Hotel celebrated its 20th year this year (the ads are pretty bad - "The Ice Hotel is no longer a teenager!!!") and is one of the best tourist traps I have ever been to, both in terms of holding you hostage and for being totally worthwhile.

I first flew to Stockholm and then connected to Kiruna which is a small town in northern Sweden above the Arctic Circle. My friend Heidi (of the Tallinn trip...we seem to be collective gluttons for frozen punishment) and I had plans to stay at the Ice Hotel for two nights, one in a "warm room" and the other in a "cold room" as they are called. The hotel receptionist gave us the run down and told us that we "must check out of the warm and check into the cold at 11am." After being reintroduced to -15°C again after a few glorious days at 0°C, I almost asked her if we could keep "the warm" as a backup in case we chickened out the next day.

The Ice Hotel is pretty amazing as you will see from the pictures. Located 12km from Kiruna in a “village” called Jukkasjärvi, it is made entirely from ice cut from the Torne River which is one of Sweden's few national rivers and, as such, is still unspoiled by hydropower or pollutants. The river is supposedly beautiful and clear (hard to tell firsthand since it was frozen solid and covered with snow when I was there) and the water is pure enough to drink directly. The river is also unique in the way it flows (although difficult to understand the technical details from the hotel guide who I am not sure could really describe them in Swedish and had to try to do it in English) and subsequently has less oxygen bubbles in it than does normal water so makes really beautifully clear ice. Normal ice is often hazy or cloudy looking and this cloudiness is caused by bubbles in the water. The less bubbles present when the water freezes, the less resulting bubbles and the clearer the ice. Somebody got the idea to build an ice house using the river ice twenty plus years ago and then some locals ended up staying there over night. Voila! The Ice Hotel was born. (They skipped the step in the middle here where somebody figured out the ridiculous amount of money people would pay for this experience!)

The Hotel is built using 9,000 tons of ice (I think I got that right) and, as it melts every summer, is rebuilt every November / December. Thus, the Ice Hotel is always unique. While the basic structure is similar, all the hotel rooms, the Ice Church, and the Ice Bar are completed by different ice "designers" each year. There is also apparently some sort of ice sculpting competition to be won before one can actually design one of the rooms. The Ice Hotel is safe to stay in until the beginning of April or so before it begins melting after which only tours are given and no one is allowed to sleep there. All of the structures have been built using a peaked dome shape to ensure that the structures melt from the highest point (the peak) down and then out toward the walls. This design ensures that the roof melts before the walls are compromised to avoid the risk of a collapsing roof. Spring tours of the melting structure are thus given in the open air but with skeleton walls still present outlining the footprint of what was. The Hotel is usually completely gone by the beginning of June.

Heidi and I stayed in "the warm" on Friday and then spent Saturday cross-country skiing near the hotel. The weather was beautiful, sunny and not even cold at -5°C (it is all relative at this point). We had a great time skiing and enjoying the outdoors, in particular because we both had gotten much smarter about dressing for the weather after Tallinn, and figured we could find a local market for a late lunch before we took snowmobiles out that night on a Northern Lights chasing expedition. We got back to the hotel just before 2pm and asked about a market. "Yes, there is a market down the road...but it closes at 2pm." What kind of store closes at 2pm?! We asked about another store because the only other option for anything out there was the Ice Hotel which had a lounge offering five items including a "reindeer joint" (I really hope that was a bad translation) sandwich, a vegetarian sandwich (bread, cheese, and butter – “vegetarian” clearly translates to “no meat” in Europe rather than to anything having to do with vegetables), dried reindeer (jerky), a bowl of nuts, or your choice of a fudge or licorice cupcake. You can see why we were a little bit desperate thinking about eating from that menu for two days!

The receptionist told us no, unfortunately, this was the only store in town. Heidi and I laughed again about the fact that it was closing at 2pm and asked when it opened the next morning joking that it probably opened at 1pm or something ridiculous. The receptionist said, "2pm." We stopped smiling. "It closes today at 2pm and opens tomorrow at 2pm?" "Yes." Reindeer joint was looking more and more like our reality. The receptionist smiled helpfully - it seemed perfectly normal to her! (To be fair, the banks in Helsinki are open from 10am – 4pm on business days.) Heidi and I looked at each other. It was now 1:56pm. "Can we leave our skis here for a few minutes?" We took off running down the road in our cross-country ski boots (not great for running, in case you are wondering). We ran the half a mile or so in the snow on the side of the road, getting stared at by the locals that we passed, and arrived at the store. Surely there will be someone checking out and we can beg our way in for five minutes to grab a few things, right? We caught a woman locking the door and asked if there was any way we could come in for just a few minutes. She told us nicely but very matter of factly, "We are closed. It is 2pm." Now I am very much someone who appreciates rules and structure but some of these northern Europeans drive me crazy! We asked if there was another store in town. "No, but you can try the Ice Hotel." As if we had not clearly just come from there. Heidi and I decided it was an Ice Hotel conspiracy. So, cupcakes for lunch?

We went with the nuts instead and got ready for our big Aurora Borealis expedition that evening. Kiruna is one of the best places in the world to see the Northern Lights but, despite all our advances in science and technology, their appearance cannot be reliably predicted. We know what temperatures are best, what atmospheric conditions are best, what time of year is best, etc, etc, but the appearance of the Northern Lights just cannot be predicted or guaranteed even given perfect conditions. Unfortunately for us, one of the absolute mandates is that you have a clear sky and the forecast said it would be cloudy that evening. On the other hand, there had been a great display only a couple days prior. We were hopeful that we would luck out.

One thing I was not willing to take chances with was being cold that night. The coldest I have ever been in my life was when I was snowmobiling in Yellowstone in December about 10 years ago. It was probably -15°F but we were going around 40 mph and the wind chill made things much colder. I was in pain from the cold (and whining excessively about it, if you trust my dad's version of the story) despite a full body snowmobile suit, heavy duty gloves and boots, heated hand grips on the snowmobile, basically the works. Thankfully, it was "warm" in Kiruna this weekend and was about 20°F so with two sets of long underwear, snow pants, a ski jacket, AND all the hardcore snowmobile gear, I was actually relatively comfortable. Much more importantly, the snowmobile ride was amazing. We set off with our group and rode together in a train, first on the frozen river, then through the forest, and then out on a lake. We had a couple group mishaps on the way...one of the snowmobiles was being driven by an older woman who kept veering off to the right. At one point she veered off the path and away from the group. The guide, in front but constantly watching for any trouble, turned around and went to help. After about 10 minutes or so, we all got off of our snowmobiles and turned them off. What was going on? Was everything ok? Turns out she had veered off the path and hit a sign. I am not sure how she managed to do this since we were on the middle of a frozen river in the Arctic Circle at the time but she did. We reconvened (and, I believe, did a couple driver switch-outs) and were back on our merry way.

We rode for about 20km before stopping at a Sami hut (the Samis are the native Lapland people) and had a dinner of bread, cheese, and moose soup which was excellent, particularly after having had nuts and diet Pepsi for lunch. Our crew included multiple Australians (that nation knows how to travel – they are everywhere!), a couple Swedes, and a Slovenian couple now living in Copenhagen. They were a mostly fun group and it was interesting to hear about how everyone had ended up at the Ice Hotel. Some were at the Ice Hotel for a week or more and were chasing the Northern Lights, one couple was back again after having already spent a week in January, others, like us, were there just for a weekend to experience the novelty of it all. While we did not really see any Northern Lights showing that night, both Heidi and I each saw (at different times) a quick shift in one of the lights although not in any of the bright colors for which the Lights are known. We did run into a group of reindeer on the ride though which was a treat and I swear to you that there were about 10 of them running in a chain of pairs. I was fully expecting a sleigh to fall from the sky behind them with a fat man in a red suit sitting in it but, unfortunately, there was no red nose guiding the team in front. (Santa lives in Finland, not Sweden, anyway.)

As you might imagine, it was completely still and peaceful (the fact that the landscape is frozen solid and covered in multiple feet of snow does a lot for keeping any possible noise pollution down!). It was fantastic to snowmobile through the forest under so many stars in such a remote and unique corner of the world. I felt so alive and found myself incredibly grateful for that specific night and experience certainly but also for my life in general and all of the blessings and opportunities I have been given over the years. The stillness, the darkness, and the feeling of sheer freedom and no restrictions, like you could ride over the pole of the earth and down the other side, made it easy to focus on the big picture when I am usually consumed by the details. For that reason, that ride is seared into my mind along with a very few other memories in my life where I had a similar, cleansing moment of pure gratitude and peace, the last being a beautiful midnight lightning storm on a remote lake in Malaysia almost three years ago. Nearly impossible to describe let alone do justice, those few moments are a memory that will stick with me for a long time. (I only wish yoga would have the same “relax and release” effect on me – I do not know how sustainable it is to rely on literally removing myself to the far reaches of the world in order to escape from the stresses of daily life! It is a very high, very expensive bar!)

Not at all in line with the rather spiritual experience directly prior, Heidi and I finished up the night in the Ice Bar with lingonberry / vodka cocktails in ice glasses. The glasses are really cool if quite uncomfortable to hold without gloves. Unbelievably, a million of these glasses are made and used each year between all of the world’s ice bars (besides the one at the Ice Hotel, there are ice bars in Oslo, Tokyo, Sydney, etc) and, even more incredibly, all of the affiliated ice bars around the world are made from and use ice from the same Torne River in Sweden. They ship this stuff all over the world! That has got to equate to one hell of a carbon footprint.

This was also the cold room night and I have to tell you that after being outside in the cold all day the thought of sleeping on ice was really not all that appealing. Because the Ice Hotel is kept at a constant indoor temperature of -5°C (warmer than outside, unbelievably!) and the rooms have no doors and are open for the public to tour each day until 6pm, you do not actually store any of your personal items or luggage in the actual room. Upon checking-in, we were given keys to the equivalent of a walk-in closet in the warm part of the hotel which is the only actual private space we got. Bathrooms are communal and are also in the warm part of the hotel – thank goodness! We were given instructions on how to “survive” a night in the Ice Hotel from the staff and at around midnight that night we took off all our layers and went to pick up our sleeping bags which are stored during the day in the warm part of the hotel. We were instructed to wear only our long underwear to bed as the sleeping bags rely on body heat to warm the bag and, counterintuitively, wearing too many layers insulates the body too well to allow the sleeping bag to do its job but not well enough for you to survive the night.

We picked up our sleeping bags in our long underwear, hats, and boots (running around in a long underwear uniformed environment does great things for camaraderie, by the way!) and booked it to our room although, as Heidi pointed out, when your room is -5°C what are you really running for? We threw our bags on the reindeer hides covering the ice bed, kicked off our boots, jumped in, and zipped those suckers all the way up, our faces the only part of our bodies exposed to the air. Surprisingly, I slept pretty well that night and only woke up a few times because my face and neck got cold (dummy – I did not bring a scarf!). At one point, my face was too cold to fall asleep so I decided to scoot myself lower into the sleeping bag so my face would no longer be exposed to the air as the opening was now above my head. I fell asleep immediately but then had a quite panicked moment when I woke up a few hours later not remembering where I was and very freaked out about the fact that I was zipped up in a bag covering my face! Other than my face, only one of my toes got cold that night and because it was only one of ten I blame the toe and not the sleeping bag.

We were woken up the next morning by a “Good morning!” from one of the Ice Hotel staff member who came into the room with a backpack of hot lingonberry juice. What a way to wake up! I had read that you could sleep with your camera and then ask them to take a picture of you in the morning. Given what the picture looks like this may have been a bad idea! As you can see, it is a bleary-eyed Arctic version of dazed and confused. We thought that the hot lingonberry juice guy at the Ice Hotel would be a great job, if for no other reason than to laugh at all the people like us punching our disoriented ways out of our bags each morning.

We spent the next morning cross-country skiing down the river before Heidi had to leave and then I spent the afternoon on a dogsled ride. Obviously slower than the snowmobile ride, dog sledding was a great way to see the landscape during the day and feel really connected to it in the way that you just cannot when you are on a noisy machine. I was most surprised by how much the dogs wanted to run – I had initially felt a bit guilty when I looked at the twelve dogs tied up to the sled ready to transport our party of eight to a tea (coffee) party in woods. By my math that meant that a dog and a half had the job of dragging my buns around for 15km. This guilt did not last long as we approached the sleds and the sounds of barking, howling, and almost screaming got louder and louder. The dogs were tied up to the sleds already and were ready to go, and I mean READY to go. They were jumping up and down, trying to lurch the braked sled forward, and were going completely crazy basically making so much noise that I could hardly stand it. There was no quieting or calming them down. Our guides / drivers just laughed and yelled over the raucous to tell us where and how to sit on the sleds. We took our positions, the guides simultaneously yelled a single word command as they took off the brake, and the dogs all sprung into action….completely and immediately silent less than a second after the command was given. It was quite impressive. The guides told us that these dogs can run up to 150km in a day which I found truly incredible. They also prefer to run when it is colder (to a point) because the snow gets too soft and they get too hot when the temperature is as “high” as it was that day at -5°C (they prefer it to be around -15°C). The guide said, “This is just like summer!” I did not find that particularly funny as I am already a bit paranoid about the potential length of this winter. (One of my consultants told me last week, “The snow could very well be gone by the end of March…and if not then probably by the end of April…I am sure it will be gone by the end of May….and it is really rare for snow to still be the ground in mid-June!” I finally had to stop her!)

The dogs, excited to be doing what they do best, took off across the frozen lake happy as clams (seems a bit strange to call dogs clams but you get my point). I was on the sled with three older Australian couples and, as the only one on my own and the lightest in the group, I got to sit in the front which was awesome. I had an amazing, unadulterated view of the scenery and really got to enjoy the dog part of dog sledding. Only bad part about being in the front is that this train does not stop for bathroom breaks so I also had an unadulterated view of #1 and #2 throughout the trip. Yuck. Small price to pay though for getting run around the Arctic Circle on a sled, I suppose. We even got rewarded for our excellent sled-sitting skills with coffee and a cinnamon roll at the halfway point where we stopped to warm up by the fire in a teepee. (The dogs did not get anything but they were quite adept at eating snow while running.) Sadly, it was my turn to head home after the dog sled ride and I was bummed to leave – the weekend was far too short!

My adventure was not quite over yet, however. In a brilliant effort to save money, I had booked individual legs of my trip with different carriers (two flights each way) but I had a very tight connection in Stockholm on my way home, with only 30 minutes between landing and takeoff of my second flight. I checked in early so I would have my tickets in hand and before even buying the tickets had done my due diligence on arrival and departure terminals so knew where I was going. Unfortunately, my first flight left a bit late so we landed 5 minutes late – not a big deal normally but quite a big deal when those 5 come out of a total of 30 available! I also did not realize when I booked my tickets that I would have to completely leave the domestic terminal in Stockholm and go back through security to get into the international terminal. I almost had a panic attack in the security line as I watched the time tick away. I got through security with less than 10 minutes to take-off, grabbed my bags, and took off in a full on sprint in Ugg boots. (For the record, I would recommend against trying this at home!) Of course, my gate was the absolute furthest gate from security and I probably ran a half a mile to get there. There was no one at the gate, no plane, and no passengers. UGH. There was a cleaning lady there though so I started asking her, “Has the plane left? Can you call someone? Where is everyone? Is this the gate for the Helsinki flight? Has the plane left? Can you call someone? CAN YOU CALL SOMEONE?!” Poor thing. I am fairly certain she did not speak a word of English. She pointed me towards another gate and I ran there only to find it was leaving for Budapest. I finally (I say finally but all of this took about 45 seconds) found someone at another desk…the flight to Helsinki was indeed gone. The flight departure times in Europe are literally the flight take-off times, not pushback from the gate times as in the US. Those little details get you every time…

I was informed that because I had booked my connecting flight with a different carrier, my connecting flight airline had no obligation to take care of me. I must have looked really pathetic as I babbled and gasped my way through my sob story which included the facts that my flight was late, I ran the whole way (as was clearly evident by my gasping, sweating state), and most importantly that I had an early morning flight to London out of Helsinki the next day. The guy took mercy on me and worked some magic with the computer before saying, “I did something I am not supposed to do but you are on the last flight.” I almost kissed him. Seriously. I had to wait 3 hours for the next flight and arrived in Helsinki at 1am only to dump out my bag, repack, and then head back to the airport a few hours later but I managed to make my flight the next day. It was an extremely short night but I was a very lucky girl!

Ironically, I am on my way back to the Arctic Circle again tomorrow for an office outing although this trip is to northern Finland. I am starting to get this crazy winter thing down…of course, just as the snow is beginning to melt! Sellaista elämä! (C’est la vie!)