A short trip to Rovaniemi has been arranged
by Elizabeth Roller (IFYE in Finland from
Indiana) and myself. Rovaniemi is in Lapland which means it is in the far north part of Finland, it is actually within the Arctic Circle!
by Elizabeth Roller (IFYE in Finland from
The trip was perhaps more adventure than we had originally planned on but even after its all done I'm still thinking it was a good idea.
We started in Tampere where we shopped and waited for the night train that we were taking to Rovaniemi, the night train leaves Tampere at around 22:00 and arrives in Rovaniemi at 7:30 the next day. You sleep and eat on the train, there are even some tickets that get you a bed!
Being the young poor travels that we are I hunted around and found us tickets for only 27€ which is pretty amazing. But they don't include a bed, or even reclining seats (ours were in the last row next to the wall) and to top it off a couple of drunken older men were sitting in the two seats facing ours, they were kind though, just... happy. Sometime after passing a larger town named Oulu we started hearing announcements about everyone getting off the train in a town called Kemi because of an accident on the tracks, we never found out what it was. So then we are waiting at the Kemi train station... for a while, until 10:00 then a taxi came and took us the last hour to Rovaniemi where we arrived at about 11:00. Whew that was a long trip!
Santa!!
The main attraction in Rovaniemi is the fact that it is where the REAL Santa resides. He has a whole village, full of gift shops, a post office (get gets alot of mail :) ), Santa's house and a couple restraunts. We both visited Santa, assured him that we had infact been good this year and told him what we wanted, I said a sauna for my home in Colorado, he said he'd do what he can about that. The Arctic circle line runs right through Santa's Village.
We took pictures, ate (reindeer hamburgers!!), bought gifts, and wandered for a whole 5 hours before heading back to the hostel (which took us forever to find).
That evening we ate street food and grocery store food for dinner and walked all around the city until it was dark, and then headed to bed, we were exhausted after our day and lack of sleep on our night train adventure.
The next day we walked through a street fair that was old time themed, there were people in traditional dress selling handy crafts, clothes, food, and jewelry. we both bought a couple things (what great gifts!). We kept walking down the sidewalk after the fair ended and found ourselves at the Rovaniemi Museum! This was by far the luckiest moment of our trip! The museum was all about how Rovaniemi is within the Arctic circle, the reindeer ranching industry, and the Northern Lights. It was only 6€ to go and we saw so so much.
After walking all over to collect our luggage from its various storage locations we were headed back to the station for our 16:20 train to our next families.
I am starting to think I'm jinxed when it comes to WiFi, it is never on my trains, my hosts don't have it or it goes down while I'm there, this train was no exception. I am learning to lower my standards though, no accidents preventing our arrival and no drunk people, it was a good ride And a great ending to a fast and fun weekend adventure!
