(Please back date to 3/16/13)
Quick note: I forgot to give you the answer to the quiz the other day. What I meant to write in the last post was: "You're right! They are all famous Finnish people!" I'll develop these famous people a bit further in this and the next post.
So far I have taken dozens of trains across places like China, Mongolia, and Russia (Siberia included) and none have been late or delayed. In fact, each train I had taken left and arrived with true communist (or post communist) precision. My first delayed train was my overnight express from Helsinki to Rovaniemi in the north. I arrived to the train station about an hour before my scheduled departure (which was a mistake, even if the train had left on time), and having some time to kill, looked for a waiting hall or somewhere to sit and read and relax. But the only place to sit and relax was the ticket issuing hall that had already closed. In this hall, people can lounge in these very comfortable, leather seats while they wait (like I did the other day) for their number to be called so that they can buy their tickets. But it was nine o’clock in the evening and the ticket hall had been closed. There were no places to sit, anywhere, except a train station bar. I didn’t feeling like paying for a beer (I’m starting to feel the effects of the intense Scandinavian prices) just so that I could find a place to sit so I walked out to the platform where my train was supposed to be and figured I could wait on one of the platform benches for thirty minutes or so and then board the train. Usually, and this is Finland included, boarding takes place approximately 30 minutes before departure, or when the platform is announced on the status board (usually they’re the same). Well, they had announced the platform, but when I got there, there was no train. So I sat and read on a bench, in the cold.
People slowly began to filter onto the platform as we got closer to 9:52, my departure time. But 9:52 came and went. No train. Everyone just kind of stood around, confused. Eventually a voice came over the loudspeaker and in Finnish, said some things pertaining to the train. The status board by the platform edge said the departure had been changed to 10:07. But that came and went as well. This wouldn’t have been such a big deal but I had two unlucky things going for me. I was freezing cold, having arrived too early to the platform in the first place, and I really, really had to pee. Soon a train pulled into the platform but I immediately recognized this train as the Allegro, the train I had taken several days ago from St. Petersburg. Russians started to filter out while Finns started to filter in, but they were all quickly shooed out by the compartment attendants who explained to them that they weren’t on their way Russia. Eventually another announcement was made and our track was moved to the other side of the platform. Ten minutes later our train arrived and the mass of people plowed their way through the cabin doors and filtered into the train, taking their seats.
I took my seat too. The cabin looked like an old airplane with two sets of two comfortable, high backed seats and one walkway running through the middle. I had a seat by the window and was fortunate that the seat next to mine was and remained empty so that I could sprawl out a bit. Since I had used my Eurail pass for this ticket and there weren’t any first class seats (as my pass oddly entitles me) and since the train was an overnight train, my choices were a normal seat for free, or a bed for an additional 25 euros. So I chose the free seat. I’m used to sleeping in odd places and an airplane style seat isn’t that bad, especially for a 12 hour train ride. The train finally jolted to a start and we rolled off into the night, northerly, into the forest.
The train ride through the nights was pretty uneventful. I slept more or less comfortably in my seat. I was able to finish my book, “Travels in Siberia,” a goal I was hoping to accomplish before I left St. Petersburg but of course, I had been parted with my e-reader for a little while. When the sun rose above the trees it made the entire landscape sparkle. By now I had been getting pretty immune to stunningly beautiful, winter wonderland landscapes. The Siberian taiga had pretty much beaten the awestruck-ness out of me. But somehow the Finnish hinterland had a few new tricks up its sleeve. The trees, large branchy pines, had been so bowed down by snow that the tops of the trees leaned this way and that, bending and curving down under the pressure. It looked like a scene out of a Dr. Suess book. All that was missing was Thing 1 and Thing 2, bouncing around, doing cartwheels in the powdery snow. I didn’t see any but imagined herds of reindeer picking through the snow, looking for frozen moss. It was pretty cool. The whole morning was like this. We passed only a handful of very small villages, the train stopping for a few minutes to let off a few local passengers.
Rovaniemi is the largest town in northern Finland. It serves as the main regional hub for the area known as Lapland (or “Lappi” in Finnish). Lapland is sort of just wilderness. It is traditionally the area settled by the only indigenous people in all of Europe (so I read), the Sami people, who make their living by herding reindeer. Lapland is mainly flat terrain, consisting of thousands of lakes (frozen and buried in winter) and vast swaths of pinewood forests. Rovaniemi is also famous because it is located right on the Arctic Circle and is the home of Santa Claus (as a local legend goes). The village of Napapiiri, 8 km north of Rovaniemi, is where the village where Santa was born is located and where the actual line of the Arctic Circle passes. More fun facts. Rovaniemi has a few mountains, low ones, and has a pretty stellar ski resort in a nearby village called Ounasvaara, home to Annti Autti, the only non-American to beat Shaun White in a pro-snowboarding event, the X-Games superpipe (in 2005), in the US. The town each night turns in to a sort of apres-ski party village, packing in skiers and snowboarders into the bars late into the night on the weekends. And many of the city’s public buildings, it’s city hall, it’s library, several housing developments, as well as many private homes, were designed by the famous Alvar Aalto, the Finnish designer in the postwar 40s and 50s. I’ve sort of been looking out for buildings that he’s designed around Finland. I didn’t know much about design before I arrived to Finland but the buildings here really are pretty cool and he by far is the country’s most famous architect/designer. Aalto spotting has been kind of fun. And of course, the northern lights can be seen from here approximately one out of every two clear nights during the peak season (in which March is the last month). So (for me anyway) Rovaniemi has its draws.
We pulled into the station about an hour late, but still pretty early in the day. Pretty much all I wanted to do on the first day was to go find the resort and go snowboarding until I passed out. I had made a reservation for the town’s only hostel, Hostel Rudolph, but oddly enough I had to check in at the expensive resort hotel that owned and maintained the hostel remotely. Apparently the hostel had no staff members on location. So I had to check in at their hotel down the street a few blocks, called Santa Hotel (this place has a theme). But seemingly sticking to snooty hotel rules, I couldn’t check in to the hostel before two in the afternoon and so in lieu of waiting around to check in, I changed into my snowboarding gear and dumped my bags in the hotel’s luggage storage room.
It was around noon and I was starting to get hungry and along the way I passed a McDonald’s. I had read before that Rovaniemi (another fun fact - I forgot this one) is home to the northernmost McDonald’s in the world. Worth going to, right? So when I found it in passing, I stopped in and ate the world’s northernmost quarter pounder with cheese. I had fun with that.
I continued to walk the two and a half kilometers east, across a frozen, snow covered river, to the resort. I found it without any issues. I walked into the main building to the resort, just a few conjoining wooden cabins actually, and asked about rentals. They told me that if I bought an all day pass (which was what I was going to do anyway) I would get the rentals for free. So the whole day only cost me 32 euros - a pretty good deal. And I didn’t have to sign my life away like I usually have to do to get my hands on a board. There was just a couple of young people working in the cabin, they handed me a board, and I was off. The resort was pretty empty when I got there, I guess it was still early on a weekday, even if it was a friday. And it felt like there weren’t any people working at the resort either. Just the two in the cabin by the rentals and one guy I saw on a snowmobile. It looked like people pretty much had free reign to all facilities without any interference whatsoever. And the resort had one of the best snowboarding parks I have ever seen (there was two of them actually). Which is probably why Antti Autti was so good. I didn’t mess around in the parks too much - I didn’t have a helmet and I’m still ailing a messed up shoulder and I didn’t want to sustain any more injuries that might ruin my trip, so I mainly stuck to the downhill. The resort did have some pretty stellar back country trails that led through thickly forested slopes. I was out there until after sunset and then, ridiculously tired from the day, and a bit beaten up from some careless wipe outs, I slowly walked back to Santa Hotel to pick up my bags and check in to the hostel.
I guess the main purpose for my going up to Lapland in the first place was to see if I could get a glimpse of the northern lights, the Aurora Borealis, the phenomenon that so few get to see. The northern lights are caused (I learned this recently) when particles from large solar flares reach earth’s atmosphere and collide with oxygen and nitrogen particles. The energy lost in the collision gives off light. And it must be pitch black, no ambient light, in order to observe it. I was really hoping that I’d get lucky and get the chance to see the lights during my one night in the north. There are only a few places on earth to see them, all in the north, obviously, but there are belts, special zones in the north where they can be seen. Scandinavia is one of them, dipping south into Norway and Iceland and then rising north through Sweden and Finland. So Finalnd, I later learned, is not the best place to see them. Northern Norway is your best bet, seeing them every night during the peak season. My original plan was to pop out of the hostel to see if they were going off every half hour until midnight, and then wake up at 2 and again at 4 just to double check. It didn’t exactly work out that way. I was really tired from not sleeping too well on the train the night before and then snowboarding for the entire day. When I got back to the hostel I checked a couple of times until about midnight and then accidentally fell asleep until morning. I was pretty upset at myself for doing that but I later learned from other foreigners who, having planned their days a little better than me, stayed up all night trying to see them and none had occurred. I felt bad for them but I was relieved that I hadn’t missed anything. I talked to one of the board rental guys about the lights the day before and he told me that he had only seen them three times this whole winter, not very high odds. So maybe it’s not as likely to see them as I had thought.
Anyway, I checked snowboarding off my Arctic list. Today, I plan to see Santa Claus. Wish me luck, I’m nervous!
Quick note: I forgot to give you the answer to the quiz the other day. What I meant to write in the last post was: "You're right! They are all famous Finnish people!" I'll develop these famous people a bit further in this and the next post.
So far I have taken dozens of trains across places like China, Mongolia, and Russia (Siberia included) and none have been late or delayed. In fact, each train I had taken left and arrived with true communist (or post communist) precision. My first delayed train was my overnight express from Helsinki to Rovaniemi in the north. I arrived to the train station about an hour before my scheduled departure (which was a mistake, even if the train had left on time), and having some time to kill, looked for a waiting hall or somewhere to sit and read and relax. But the only place to sit and relax was the ticket issuing hall that had already closed. In this hall, people can lounge in these very comfortable, leather seats while they wait (like I did the other day) for their number to be called so that they can buy their tickets. But it was nine o’clock in the evening and the ticket hall had been closed. There were no places to sit, anywhere, except a train station bar. I didn’t feeling like paying for a beer (I’m starting to feel the effects of the intense Scandinavian prices) just so that I could find a place to sit so I walked out to the platform where my train was supposed to be and figured I could wait on one of the platform benches for thirty minutes or so and then board the train. Usually, and this is Finland included, boarding takes place approximately 30 minutes before departure, or when the platform is announced on the status board (usually they’re the same). Well, they had announced the platform, but when I got there, there was no train. So I sat and read on a bench, in the cold.
People slowly began to filter onto the platform as we got closer to 9:52, my departure time. But 9:52 came and went. No train. Everyone just kind of stood around, confused. Eventually a voice came over the loudspeaker and in Finnish, said some things pertaining to the train. The status board by the platform edge said the departure had been changed to 10:07. But that came and went as well. This wouldn’t have been such a big deal but I had two unlucky things going for me. I was freezing cold, having arrived too early to the platform in the first place, and I really, really had to pee. Soon a train pulled into the platform but I immediately recognized this train as the Allegro, the train I had taken several days ago from St. Petersburg. Russians started to filter out while Finns started to filter in, but they were all quickly shooed out by the compartment attendants who explained to them that they weren’t on their way Russia. Eventually another announcement was made and our track was moved to the other side of the platform. Ten minutes later our train arrived and the mass of people plowed their way through the cabin doors and filtered into the train, taking their seats.
I took my seat too. The cabin looked like an old airplane with two sets of two comfortable, high backed seats and one walkway running through the middle. I had a seat by the window and was fortunate that the seat next to mine was and remained empty so that I could sprawl out a bit. Since I had used my Eurail pass for this ticket and there weren’t any first class seats (as my pass oddly entitles me) and since the train was an overnight train, my choices were a normal seat for free, or a bed for an additional 25 euros. So I chose the free seat. I’m used to sleeping in odd places and an airplane style seat isn’t that bad, especially for a 12 hour train ride. The train finally jolted to a start and we rolled off into the night, northerly, into the forest.
The train ride through the nights was pretty uneventful. I slept more or less comfortably in my seat. I was able to finish my book, “Travels in Siberia,” a goal I was hoping to accomplish before I left St. Petersburg but of course, I had been parted with my e-reader for a little while. When the sun rose above the trees it made the entire landscape sparkle. By now I had been getting pretty immune to stunningly beautiful, winter wonderland landscapes. The Siberian taiga had pretty much beaten the awestruck-ness out of me. But somehow the Finnish hinterland had a few new tricks up its sleeve. The trees, large branchy pines, had been so bowed down by snow that the tops of the trees leaned this way and that, bending and curving down under the pressure. It looked like a scene out of a Dr. Suess book. All that was missing was Thing 1 and Thing 2, bouncing around, doing cartwheels in the powdery snow. I didn’t see any but imagined herds of reindeer picking through the snow, looking for frozen moss. It was pretty cool. The whole morning was like this. We passed only a handful of very small villages, the train stopping for a few minutes to let off a few local passengers.
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| Rovaniemi train station |
We pulled into the station about an hour late, but still pretty early in the day. Pretty much all I wanted to do on the first day was to go find the resort and go snowboarding until I passed out. I had made a reservation for the town’s only hostel, Hostel Rudolph, but oddly enough I had to check in at the expensive resort hotel that owned and maintained the hostel remotely. Apparently the hostel had no staff members on location. So I had to check in at their hotel down the street a few blocks, called Santa Hotel (this place has a theme). But seemingly sticking to snooty hotel rules, I couldn’t check in to the hostel before two in the afternoon and so in lieu of waiting around to check in, I changed into my snowboarding gear and dumped my bags in the hotel’s luggage storage room.
It was around noon and I was starting to get hungry and along the way I passed a McDonald’s. I had read before that Rovaniemi (another fun fact - I forgot this one) is home to the northernmost McDonald’s in the world. Worth going to, right? So when I found it in passing, I stopped in and ate the world’s northernmost quarter pounder with cheese. I had fun with that.
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| The northernmost McDonald's in the world - it got me inside! |
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| My free rental board |
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| The resort built a "teepee" ramp that you could launch out from down the slope - it was pretty icy! |
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| A view of the forest from the top, looking south |
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| Looking out northward, the north pole just in the distance! |
Anyway, I checked snowboarding off my Arctic list. Today, I plan to see Santa Claus. Wish me luck, I’m nervous!
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