But 出师不利, supposed to leave at 1:30pm but the bus broke down; and as we waited for the replacement bus, it broke down as well! So the guide asked if it was okay for us to get back at 5pm... Thinking we didn't wanna run up and down, we headed back to Universitet to play monopoly deal in the empty school cafe. We eventually boarded the bus at 4.30pm and set off! One hour into the drive, Huihan started puking cos of carsickness; things got a little bit better when the car stopped, but it came back once we move off again. And for the whole trip the poor girl just kept complaining she's very miserable... The bus stopped a few times before I (we) finally fell asleep.
The thing is, I didn't even know I fell asleep, much less for so long! Next thing I know it's almost 9 in the morning and we're surrounded by rows of trees covered in thick layers of snow!!! Really pleasantly surprised and have the "magic school bus" feel hahaha. Finally, we reached at 1030am, and before I rushed off to the toilet, here's a view of everything in white that I captured!
Went off to the walking tour and it wasn't very interesting, did get to make a (failed) snow angel though (Will probably upload the video onto insta)!
Waited for time to past so we had early dinner before we headed out for dog-sledging and riding snow-mobile!
Went back to the hostel alive (after being in the cold for so long, and also pillion-riding with Huihan behind the "wheels," "chains" actually). 800SEK was pretty worth it consider the once in a lifetime experience; and the dogs are really super tamed the initial creeps their howling gave disappeared the moment I get to go close to them and feel their warmth...
Also, got to drink free red wine from a cool container courtesy of Scanbalt as compensation for the initial delay:
Next morning we moved out of Kiruna and continued our journey up north towards Abisko. Stopped by the world renowed Ice Hotel on the way!
All the deluxe rooms have unique designs; this is one of the simpler yet most intriguing ones. Think about it: it's a rigid form made basically by unrestricting water
We left after exploring almost every single one of the rooms and headed to a Sami family's hut and their reindeer farm. The owner was this old uncle that keeps talking about irrelevant stuff; so much that it becomes a little annoying... But one thing he said did make the entire hut go quiet; when asked how many reindeers he had, he said they are not supposed to say out of superstition, courtesy, and also to avoid jealousy, but he added that, "I'm very rich," and he paused for a good 5 seconds to leave us hanging before continuing, "not in the money way, but I have 7 grandchildren. Many things in life are worth more than money and reindeers." We all know that, but to be reminded again so far away from home by a well-traveled farmer, it's priceless...
ABISKO! Reached our hostel not long later and we have our own cabin (I realize I forgot a photo as promised)! 6 to a cabin so we have a new roommate from Germany, Linda (who celebrates her birthday on this day that we met). Chilled in our cabin till 8pm for BBQ but the BBQ turns out to be in a hut (indoor BBQ, quite interesting; was wondering how go do it in this cold) that's too small to contain everyone, so our guide Alex took some bump-sledge and brought us to this long slope down I-dont-know-where. All hell broke loose when we started doing downslope 4-5 people at a time, colliding everywhere as we slide down... After going down and climbing up (and fighting the cold) we used up almost all our energy and so we finally decided to head back for dinner (and cos the BBQ was still too crowded so we decided to cook in our cabin instead). We went out again at 12am for aurora-hunting but we only managed to see a faint streak of green. We did, however, entertained ourselves pretty well with this!
Chilled by the snow pile for about 15minutes; the silence was so soothing and when I looked up into the sky the few stars reminded me of the peaceful nights in army during outfield; but when I looked out into the sea of white, everything felt even more surreal and unreal... A group of people came by and asked us along to find the lake with a supposedly nicer view but it takes half an hour to reach; we walked but gave up halfway and went back to sleep, thinking tomorrow will be a better night...
Next morning we went to Narvik in Norway (for me it's the third time in this country this year); a border town with a beautiful lake.
Ofotfjord. Yet another fjord, they never fail to impress though
First thing after we reach the city centre, no surprise, grocery shopping! Nothing much in this town except... they have nice snow for snow fight and snow man!! So Snow War II and Snow Man II (shall skip the photos)
Went back to Sweden and changed into our bathing suit cos it's time for sauna plus arctic circle dipping!!! Sweat it all out in the sauna and toast ourselves up nice and warm before running into the -11 degree wind and run on the super cold snow that hurts our feet before running into the frozen lake, breaking the ice as I moved deeper into the water, and finally, dipping my whole body into the arctic temperature, ice cold (literally), supposedly warmer (at about -1 to 2 degrees) water. 1 second. That was enough; and that's all it takes to make a few adult male squeal. Wanted very much to take a video of us swimming in the snow cos I promised Samuel to "swim in the snow during winter" to keep myself fit and bet a Macdonalds meal with him that I'll do it, but though we did the sauna-dipping thingy several times, it was too dark for any video! But this is one hell of an experience that I doubt I'll ever wanna do it again... Or maybe I will HAHAH. Eventually, we had enough of the icy lake... and we decided to roll in the snow -.- it was a stupid idea cos it hurt even more!!!
Went back to whip up an awesome dinner after the intense physical workout.
After dinner we headed out and this is truly the HIGH-LIGHT of the highlights. Walked the half an hour route back to the sauna hut towards this feint green "cloud" that we saw along the way. I've been forewarned that the aurora aren't what they seem as in the photos when seen through our naked eyes, so the disappointment didn't hit me that hard when we figured what we're seeing are northern lights (well it was still a pleasant surprise cos weather forecast says it's gonna be cloudy the whole night so it was good that at least we saw something!) We could only verify what we saw to be northern lights after people shoot it with their cameras on long exposure and this is what we've got:
Still, it's nice to actually witness it firsthand and I've been hunting it ever since rumour has it that activities are high this year and there were speculations about it appearing in Stockholm earlier in October!...
Next morning was the usual wake up, pack up and breakfast, except checking out wasn't as smooth cos of the irritating cleaning check that got me so pissed off (said things I shouldn't have said too, I'm sorry! It's my low-EQ at work but oh wells, they're being overly-anal about it too!). 4 hours to kill so we went to see a frozen canyon; indeed everywhere is frozen including the river (that's still running underneath a thick layer of snow and ice) which Jiahan and Joshua went down to explore, while the only frozen thing I'm interested in is my toes so the rest of us went back to hide in the hut. Boarded the bus and off we go! 22 more hours to Stockholm... -.-
First stop was at edge of arctic circle where everywhere north will have midnight sun during the summer (24 hour sunlight!) and the opposite during the winter (no sunlight at all); then was dinner (free! Compensation for the delay at the start); and the rest are just the usual stops for long lines of people (mostly girls) waiting for toilet
Eventually reached Stockholm earlier than scheduled which kinda spoiled our plans; chilled for almost 2 hours and ate the #14 recommendation on TripAdviser for Stockholm to put a pleasant end to the nicest trip of my exchange ever since school started
