My trip to Lapland

The adventure started on a snowy day in February when the airplane landed in Helsinki. An excited crowd of exchange students was sitting on a cold bus parked outside of the terminal, waiting for the adventure to start. My friends were already there, trying to find a comfortable position. After everyone had embarked, the bus finally departed.  After a sixteen-hour drive on the snowy Finnish streets we finally arrived in Rovaniemi, the famous village of Santa Claus and the first town above the Arctic Circle. Although a lot of tourists were excited about meeting the “real” Santa, I was still looking forward to getting back on the bus and continuing the journey north. Once we arrived at the final destination, Saariselkä, which is a little touristic resort in the north of Lapland, we were assigned to our cottages. It looked exactly as you would imagine: a small wooden house in the middle of the snow. The inside of the cottage was Spartan and minimalist, but there was everything one could need, including a fireplace and a sauna. Although the cottage was really nice, we didn’t spend much time there as our schedule was filled with different activities such as cross country skiing, snowshoes, snowmobiles, husky sledding, reindeer sledding and several other funny games. One of the activities I want to highlight is a day trip to the north of Norway. The bus drove us through the Norwegian Alps to Bugøynes, a very small fishing village on the coast, not far from North Cape. There we experienced a real sauna and after that we jumped in the Arctic Ocean! I will never forget the cold penetrating the bones and the water freezing on your skin on the way back to the sauna. Even though it was crazy, we decided to do another round and then one more. It was amazing!

However, a trip to Lapland is incomplete without seeing the northern lights. In spite of what one would think, the lights are not visible every night. In theory they might appear at random every night, but they can be spotted only under favourable weather conditions. In our case there was only a night with clear sky, so all of us knew it was the only opportunity to see the lights. We were sledding with reindeer in the forest when suddenly a feeble green line appeared on the horizon. In a few seconds, it became brighter and bigger and everyone started pointing at it. Even the reindeer stopped walking, so we could jump off the sledge and admire the show in a clearing. The greenish lights started dancing and pulsing, forming wavy lines in the dark sky. The spectacle was simply stunning! However, everything comes with a price. According to the old Finnish legends, the northern lights only appear during the coldest nights, although the scientists argue that the cold and the lights are not correlated. On one hand I totally agree with the scientists, but on the other hand I couldn’t prove the legends to be wrong as the thermometer was showing -35 degrees and a freezing wind was blowing from Russia. I was feeling cold even with five layers on! Concluding, I would strongly recommend visiting Lapland, but at the same time I would suggest that you bring the warmest clothes possible.

Sandro Marcon, Advanced

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We are teachers and students at the Cairns College of English and Business (CCEB). How lucky are we to work and study in the Australian Wet Tropics with the world's oldest rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef at our doorstep! We would like to share our happy posts with the world! Welcome to the CCEB space eveyone.

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