Back @home - first plannings for the summer #1.

1. Get the tickets. Arvikafestivalen - DONE.
2. Build a personal tracklist Arvika 2009 at last.fm - DONE (updating).
3. Hope other people will also update the Arvika 2009-Tag to become global.
4. Start flight-/bus-/train-price comparisons, but how?

Vacations are always too short.

Hard to leave friends. Men tack för allt och vi ses i sommaren (need to install swedish on my phone).

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Some smaller picture updates.

On the way to STHLM, i found the time to push some pictures Via picasa and Twitter. Should become visible on the left side.



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Always best weather on departure.

Gladly we still have had half a day before the plane to STHLM leaves. The last few days were a bit exhausting, so preferred to sleep instead of the blog. let's drop an instantly freezing tear and start the preparations for the summer-trip.



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Better weather since Narvik.

Always chitchat about the weather can really be ... Annoying? But in Abisko now is a clear sky, the wind has stopped and still -20 degrees just because of our small trip to narvik which is at least 10 times bigger than Kiruna (crazy norwegians to cite our bus driver).


And more and more this swedish railway organisation keeps winning me as a supporter: "if you use the ticket-machine in narvik, it's cheaper. So i will sell you a oneway ticket. Will you pay Visa or Master?" - it is not this coolness or this nice question how i'll like to pay, but he betrays his firm! No! He works for his customers if he tells me how to get the better price! But the trick from yesterday with the card did not work again, so we had to pay the half price of what Kirunian taxi drivers tear from our pockets for a tenth of route length! Shame on you, Kiruna. I mean 350 SEK for a five minute way and no bus? Thats a nice trick! Let's see if i will be able to hire someone for ... 200 SEK?


Nevertheless hopefully, we can do some cross-country skiing tomorrow. Not yet sure which route, but ...


P.s: norwegians sell weapons in ordinary malls, but from tonight at two, they invent 'the last order'! What an innovative idea.



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The weather gets better.

After our short 9 km trip from Abisko to björkliden but with freshened wind and partially dry snow, crossing several frozen rivers it is not -18 degrees anymore. it took us two hours that still do feel like six hours. Glad, we could have gone back to Abisko by train. Best it was for free because they did not accept my card, but they said it was SJ's (the swedish rail corporation) fault and they even thanked us for our politeness!


So today the weather gets better and better. Just kidding. It is -19 today and the hard wind playing with the snow has not stopped yet. So we'll move over to narvik in norway - let's check the coastal weather.



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A hot trip from Kiruna below zero.

Kiruna as a starting point seems to be perfect. So let's hit the road with the bus to abisko.


"you have a different grip on ice as on dry streets..." grip? On Ice? Something must be wrong here. "no, no", the driver laughs. "we do have nails (spikes) in our tires." within a glimpse of a heartbeat i can see that the 10-ton bus just climbs a small hill in curve - the needle shows 105km/h. Absolutely relaxed i try to concentrate on the near sea of torneträsk but without the sun which left the area already at four o'clock like in the movie 'pitch black' there is no way to put your mind in any other direction as the front.


The perfect moment to feel your heart freeze to stone or jump out of your mouth (whatever you prefer): the needle settles at only 95km/h as a felt 300ton truck passes by at full speed. "va fan" whispers our driver but it is forbidden to translate, especially if after the truck an instant blizzard of frozen snow changes the sight to 'pitch white' for 30 seconds.


Our driver feels angst in the bus and tries to be kind: "no need to worry, you don't have to walk the last 2km to the touriststation, i'll bring you there. Not that one of those norwegians (he means the trucks) might get you." Tries to convince him that there is a special footpath with trees as windshelter are not of any kind of interest for a real scandinavian bus driver. So after a short stop at a supermarket in Abisko Östra because our driver needs a good breakfast tomorrow morning, we finish the trip in his sparetime with a monster of a bus directly in front of the door of Abisko Touriststation - in front means that the bus managed to stop 2m before he tried to use the entrance hall as a garage.


Needless to say that the savior of our lives instantly called the station the moment he could not open the door asking at the central in stockholm(!) how it could happen that the entrance is locked when he delivers! But after many 'tack' and 'varsogod' he vanishes into the darkness carrying his own blizzard with him.

Temperature at 18:00: -8 deg

At 21:30: -10 deg

Wind: 6 (it tries to rebuild the house).



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Konsequentes Daunenhändlerrupfen.

So sendete am vergangenen Sonntag TV4 in 'Kalla fakta' schön wie gänsen bei lebendigem Leib die begehrte Ware der Daunen ausgerissen wird. Jetzt verhält es sich auch noch so, dass einige der Tiere diese Prozedur nicht verkraften und sich auf die Reise zu den göttern machen. Ahléns, eine schwedische kaufhauskette reagiert und nimmt ausnahmslos alle daunenprodukte aus dem programm - die anderen händler und ketten werden diesem beispiel wohl folgen. Ikea fordert ebenfalls schärfere kontrollen für die daunengewinnung.

Artikel im netz: z.B. dn.se/dun


PS. Wollte mir eigentlich noch heute eine Daunenweste kaufen - boykottiere aber ebenfalls ab sofort alle hersteller von daunen-produkten. Kein spass. Nils holgersson goes gore galore.



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Books on the run?

Already stumbled last time on it. You forgot something good for your brain? Buy a book. F.ex. "svensk maffia" - a documentation about the dark side of life in the up north.

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