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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