...tell the northern lights to keep shining

Hej :)

Some hours ago I came back from Kiruna. Some people asked me where and what Kiruna is, so I'll give you a very short description - Kiruna is in the far north, approx. 1200 km away from Stockholm and sweden's biggest town up in the north. It's a really nice town that lives of the mining and tourism.

However, we went there to see the Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi and to make some tours with sledge dogs, snow mobiles and snow shoes. Of course we also hoped to see the northern light...
We arrived on Friday around 1 o'clock - it was not that cold but already getting dark. A taxi drove us to our hostel (which was really good - it was like a small apartment with our own kitchen and bathroom). Later we went downtown to go to the tourist office and look around the town. On Saturday we were picked up from the hostel to get to the snow mobile tour - it was quite far away from Kiruna.
Driving with the snow mobile was really cool - it wasn't that cold (around 0 degrees, which is really warm ;) ) but we got warm clothes before we jumped on the snow mobiles. With the snow mobiles we drove through the forest, over frozen lakes, streets...until we arrived at the Icehotel. There we had time to look at it - and I must say that it's pretty amazing. It wasn't that special, in my opinion, but it was nice to see. I wouldn't necessarily want to spend a night there - it's much cheaper to go camping somewhere in Sweden's wilderness - and it has the same effect. Nevertheless, it's really cool to look at all the ice figures and the rooms. It isn't finished yet, so we couldn't see everything - but it was enough ;) Afterwards we drove back to the "camp" and had some reindeer meat with potatos.
The next day we went to church - oh yes. We wanted to have a look at the church and since our timing was perfect we were able to attend mass. Mass is probably the wrong expression - it was a christmas mass with christmas carols and Jesus-Story - played by adults, who sang some songs. It was interesting to watch - and to listen to the swedish ;)
In the evening we went for a walk - on snow shoes. It was nice...but since I'm not a huge fan of winter sports it wasn't my favourite activity - although I must say that it was fun to do. And we saw our first northern light - the sky was clear so we saw many many stars - and the northern light. The guide took us to a small hut where we had coffee, sandwiches (of course with reindeer meat) and cake.
On Monday, our last full day in Kiruna, we had time to do whatever we wanted. I decided to stroll around the city and go inside the town hall. In the evening we made a dog sledge tour - which was my personal highlight of the weekend. The dogs were really beautiful and well trained - they really had fun doing this. It was a very unique feeling to sit on the sledge, hearing the dogs and the sound of the sledge, watching the stars and the snowy landscape...it was really cool, I enjoyed it a lot. It was freezing cold (around minus 20 degrees) but we got good clothes there, so it didn't feel too cold. After the sledge tour we went for a walk - and we saw some more northern lights. It is so fascinating to watch them, I guess you can't believe it unless you see them yourself. We stood there for more than 1 hour to watch them in the sky. Most of them were green, but some of them changed their colour from yellow to red to green...fascinating.
However, today - Tuesday - we left Kiruna and came back here. I really enjoyed the weekend and if I ever have the change to go there again - I will do it. It was an amazing experience :)

So, that was my travel-report ;) Sorry if it's quite boring to read, but I'm tired - and I wanted to write it before I fall asleep.
I will write again later this week...
cu
manuel

OH YES - Of course you can watch pictures of Kiruna...here ;)

and btw - the headline is taken from a Tori Amos Song ("Amber Waves")