South --> Hamburg --> North

1600 km after midsummer, a week of school camp with my dear and oldest friend Michelle was waiting. We met the first day of Kindergarten and now she is an elementary school teacher. Camp took place in a castle where I myself visited in fourth grade. These factors contributed greatly to the curious feeling that is supervising third graders to bed & sleep and overall pretending to be a responsible-minded adult example.

We rode a horse carriage, walked at night through clouds of fireflies, hiked through the hills, got to know a swarm of bees far too well, danced on ropes and spent hours on playgrounds. There was really never enough coffee around (or I'm just used to Swedish amounts of coffee consumption these days)... sure slept well at night.

Midsommar

We had the best Midsummer this year. Bitte invited us to her summer house and it felt like living in a storybook for the next two days.

On the road to the North, the end

After an itchy night in Jokkmokk, we turned south to travel to Luleå and the Baltic Sea coast and found out that a nordic city, the sea, beaches, warm weather and midnight sun are a very good combination.

The next morning it was time to part ways, Marco was flying back to Munich from Luleå.

I drove back to Stockholm over the course of the next three days. One evening, on a sandy shore near Umeå, my Olympus XA, having behaved capriciously since Jokkmokk, decided to part as well. This leaves the following east coast stops unrecorded and I hope to report back from the north some time next january, documenting aurora borealis and polar bears.

Roadtrip to the North, 5

Continuing north, we saw our first reindeers the next morning. From the moment we passed the sign "polar circle 30 km" we became super excited... as soon as we arrived, we rushed out of the car to hop across the polar circle several times, and then we jumped into the lake and crossed it swimming.

We arrived at the northernmost point of our journey, the city of Jokkmokk.

Here we try to see the midnight sun (you know, the moment it turns) on a hill next to Jokkmokk. We read it´s where you have the best view (true) and a nice café opened into the night (false). Yes there was a house though. We just sat down on the porch and started watching, when suddenly an Irish guy with swallow tattoes on his arms came out and was just as surprised to see us as we were to encounter him. He informed us that sometimes it takes him up to 10 minutes to be able to open the house's door from inside, then he vanished again.

Meanwhile, the sun was moving unbelievably slow and clouds of mosquitos were trying to eat us alive. So, general advice. Go much later than you think you should... the first picture is taken around 11 pm. The sun moves so flatly above the horizon that it constantly looks like "any time now. Any time!"

Roadtrip to the North, part 4

The next morning we set out early to go hiking in the moory fjäll landscape. We picked a six hours tour, but already needed two hours to find the correct way. After another two, we were shooed back by a thunderstorm. Nevertheless, it was great and we encountered several animal species we had never met before, like strange kinds of birds and lemmings, which tried to hide but failed.

We had the usual lunch but since we had run out of real bread we had to eat Swedish Knäckebröd, which neither of us loves and I had in fact just bought because it came in a pretty box.

At a fleamarket in Stockholm I had once asked a guy about nice spots to visit in Sweden, and he very enthusiastically told me about Vilhelmina, "the most beautiful town he had ever been to in his life". Since then I naturally always wanted to visit. So when we returned from the Fjälls and continued north, I was thrilled to be finally passing through. It sure was nice. The round café you see was originally meant to be spinning to provide a good view over the area.

We continued to drive until before Arvidsjaur, passing wild rivers, and everything smelled like pine cone sauna aroma.