During my Erasmus, I crossed the Arctic Circle and settled for a week in the town of Kiruna, in Northern Sweden. From Göteborg we took the train (with sleep cabins) that took 20 hours to get there.
The first day we went dog sleighing across Kiruna woods and on top of the river, and on the way back we rode snow mobiles. It’s way more exciting to ride one of those at 60km/h than my lousy old car at 140! And in the middle of nothing, we saw a glimpse of the Northern Lights.
The next days we went to the Kirunavaara mines, where we learned a lot about how it works, to the Ice Hotel, yep an hotel that is only made of ice and snow (and “snice”) and has to be rebuilt every year. Finally we got the chance of meeting some natives, the Sami People and learnt a lot about them.
On our free time we did snowboard, sleighing down a really high slope and walked across the town. We learnt that because of the mining, the ground is becoming unstable and the city will have to be moved, little by little. Plans have been in place for 20 years, but only now they are starting to run out of time and speeding up the process.
An awesome week with a lot of friends, snow and fun!