Sweden
February 12, 2008 — amelied
Last year, I did one semester as an exchange student in Uppsala (Sweden).
In this page, I’ll describe the travels I did and how is life in Sweden.
Lappland (March 2007):
I went to Lapland for 3 days with three friends. We took the train in Uppsala and stopped in Kiruna. Kiruna is the northernmost city of Sweden with 18 000 inhabitants.
Iron extraction is a key industry in this area. The first day we walked around kiruna. It was full of snow everywhere!
You can see pictures from the city with the blue links: Ice Construction, The Church, The Bell Tower, Iron Mine.
In the evening, we tried to see the northern lights. But we didn’t succeed this day.
The day after, we did dogsledge. We were two per dogsledge and we were able to drive our dogsledge on our own.
My friend drove until 12.am (Our Dogsledge). Then, we had lunch in a hut. We ate a really delicious salmon soup (Salmon Soup). After lunch, I drove the dogsledge (Dogsledge Driver) myself. It was not that easy because the dogs sometimes were not going straight.
At 11pm we saw the northern lights. I was really impressed, it was the first time we saw this unusual phenomen. Indeed, it is not something french people are used to see as it only occurs near the pole. There were green forms in the sky which were moving. I don’t have any picture of northern lights because my camera is not sensitive enough for night captures To see beautiful lights you need a clear and cold weather. We were lucky this day!
The last day, we rent a car. And we went to the Ice Hotel (A Wall). Everything from the wall to the table or beds is made of ice in there. Some artists and architects come every year to build a room(On a Bed,The Entrance). Doors are made of reindeer skin (Reindeer Doors). Next to the Hotel, there is a church (The Curch).
In the afternoon, we did a small trip by car to see the landscape. We were in the middle of nowhere (Lake), alone…Not really….(Female Reindeers, The Herd). Tooday wild reindeers have disappeared from Scandinavia. Actually, Reindeers are half domesticated.
