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!)