December 2017
Going to the Swedish Lapland has been on my bucket list since I applied for my exchange semester in Sweden. So, little did I hesitate when I saw the offer from Scanbalt to go on a little adventure to Lapland. In December, the time had finally come, and we started our 23 hours bus ride to Kiruna, which is the northernmost town in Sweden. I wasn't quite sure of how to surive being so many hours on a bus, but it turned out to be quite okay. I think all you need is a good company (which I definitely had!) and even the longest busride will be perfectly fine.
The next morning, we finally woke up in a wonderful winterwonderland. Since we didn't go to Lapland for a relaxed holiday we had a guided tour through Kiruna right after breakfast and after that we went on a snowmobile and dog sled tour. That was such a blast and the landscape was truly stunning.
However, our ultimate goal was seeing the northern lights but the weather god on the first two days was not on our side. So, in the evening we prepared ourselves for a long night as we decided not to go to bed without having seen the northern lights. And I can tell you, we got so lucky that night. We went outside at 8 pm and the sky was glowing and the lights were dancing on the sky while we had a little campfire and some Swedish glögg. After one hour, however, they faded and didn’t seem to return. So we waited until 1 am and finally the green lights were showing up again (activitycheck was positive ;)). The magical lights will never get boring, eventhough I had seen them before on our trip to the Lofoten Islands. We stayed outside until 3 am because we couldn’t stop watching the lights dancing.
