I wish you were here tonight with me to see the Northern Lights
I wish you were here tonight with me
-The Rasmus

    My friend Muriel, from Switzerland, and I puffed up the stairs to Track 1 at the Tampere train station, dragging our snowboard bags awkwardly behind us. It was two in the morning, and she and I, along with ten other exchange students from the Tampere area, were about to board the night train to Rovaniemi, the capital of Finnish Lapland, ten long hours northbound. We had assigned seats, and rushed, as fast as our luggage handicap would allow us, to our wagon. We boarded the train into another world.

    Apparently, all 58 of the exchange students going to Lapland had been seated together, and the wagon was chaos- full of luggage, students, and languages. Muriel and I found seats together and spent the remainder of the train ride making friends and playing games to pass the time and fight exhaustion. As we traveled north, the scenery out the window grew snowier. Cities became scarcer, and houses farther apart.
We stayed at a resort, Kairosmaja, at the foot of Phyätunturi, one of the largest fells in Finland. Sauna is a necessity in Finnish culture, and went there immediately after unpacking our things. We marveled at the sauna area, which was separated by gender. It had spacious changing rooms, candle light, a fire place, and multiple showers. Some of the girls were overzealous löylyn heittämisessä, putting water on the coals, and the sauna heated up in no time. We were right on a lake, and there was an avantouinti, a hole in the ice, where we could swim, if we were adventurous enough. We grabbed our socks and our towels, ran carefully down the dock, and climbed down the icy steps into the water. It was an experience for most of us, for we had no such opportunities in our home saunas, and the water was colder than could be imagined. I could feel the blood circulating through my body, and it took my breath away. Some enjoyed it and were able to swim circles around the steps, but I couldn’t stand the chill. Once we got out of the water, though, the outside air felt mild and we sat on the dock, chatting. We warmed up again in the sauna, and then took turns rolling in the snow. I had expected it to be easy after a dip in the lake, but the snow stuck to my skin, and burned like needles as I ran back to the sauna. The cycle of warming and cooling continued until we grew tired, then hiked up the hill to our cabins and went to bed. Sleep after sauna is the most refreshing thing I had come to experience.
We were awakened early in the morning for aamupalaa, prepared kindly by the owners of the resort. Breakfast choices were corn flakes, bread, and of course, porridge. A staple in Finland, it was served once a week at school lunch, and most mornings at home. We borrowed snowshoes for the resort garage, and piled into the tour bus heading to Pyhä. We caught a glimpse of a reindeer out the bus window, the first sign we were truly in Lapland. We were dropped off at the edge of the oldest national park in Finland. Snowshoeing seemed easy enough at first, but nothing could have prepared me for the hike that lay ahead of us. It snowed overnight, and we se set off through deep snow, under a canopy of trees. It took some time to get used to walking with apparatuses similar to tennis rackets strapped to our boots, but it was only when we became adjusted to them that the going vecame difficult. We got to the edge of a cliff, and we all slid dangerously, one after another, down to the bottom. We hiked along the valley for a few kilometers, finally taking a break at an eighteen meter waterfall of ice. We climbed behind it, and looked out into the valley, the view blurry through the thick layer of ice.
We began the ascent out of the valley, up a steeper hill than what we repelled down earlier. There were no trees to hold on to on the way up, and had to use a combination of strength and the ice picks on our shoes to make it to the top. The snow was three feet deep in parts, and we were all ready for a break. “I had to fight so hard not to just lie down in the snow and sleep,” I wrote in my journal that night. We stopped for lunch at a cabin, and Harri, our leader, started a fire so we could roast the makkara, or sausage, that we had brought along. We had come to the mid-point along our journey, but a distance still lay ahead. The hike back to the resort was on level ground, and we kept our spirits up by singing. We felt like Hansel and Gretel, in the depths of a forest, with no one knowing our whereabouts. After a ten kilometer hike, we lay in the snow outside Kairosmaja, feeling proud of our accomplishments.
That night, we had a pancake dinner in a Lappish hut. It was shaped like a teepee, with a fire set up in the middle, and a hole in the ceiling for the smoke to billow from. We were given pans on sticks and a pitcher of batter, and cooked our pannukakkuja over the flames. We filled them with apple jam, and ate them directly out of the pan.

    Our counselors called us outside because they had spotted Northern Lights in the sky. Most of us had never seen them before; they have been known to occur in Southern Finland but are rare. We stood, numb to the cold, staring up. Green bands, barely visible at first, danced across the sky. They wove increasingly bright wave patterns which filled the heavens like it was a canvas. Before we knew it, they had disappeared, rolling away into the night. We had never seen anything like it. We filled our cameras with hopeful shots of above, but could not capture the beauty of the Aurora Borealis.
We awoke early again, and cross-country skied three kilometers to the base of a nearby mountain. We hiked from the base, watching as the evergreens became smaller and smaller as we neared the tree line, resembling trees from Mount Krumpit. We entered a snowcapped cabin and were poured hot cider in wooden mugs. A woman spoke to us in broken English about the amethyst mine we were about to enter, and area of Lapland we were visiting. There were eight people and four reindeer per square kilometer, and six local bears. We climbed steps down into the mine, and dug at the rocky ground, in search of some purple hues.

    On our last day up north, we packed our things, cleaned our rooms, and bid farewell to Kairosmaja. We drove south back to Rovaniemi, and stopped for lunch along the way- reindeer meatballs and mashed potatoes. If I hadn’t been told it was reindeer meat, I would not have noticed. It tasted like the beef meatballs my mom made at home. Then we visited Santa. He lives in Eastern Lapland, on the border with Russia, on a fell called Korvatunturi. Rovaniemi is his tourist home, with a theme park dedicated to him. We first visited Santa’s post office. All letters sent to Santa end up there, no matter to what location they are addressed. There was a shelf of the letters Santa received the previous Christmas, and they were sorted by country. There were even some from Vietnam, Nepal, and Kyrgyzstan. Santa is quite a popular man. Packages of old envelopes were sold to raise money for UNICEF, and I bought a few to see the variety of senders there were. In 2002, 600,000 letters were sent to Santa. Some were addressed to North Pole, 2nd Star to the Right, Elf Village, but they all ended up in Santa’s Park in Rovaniemi. For six Euros, you could fill out a form and Santa would send a personalized letter to your child. The Christmas spirit was florishing at all times of the year in Rovaniemi.

    We visited Santa in his office. There were pictures of John Cleese and the Spice Girls posing with him, as well as Finnish politicians and celebrities. Since this was the real Santa, pictures with him cost seventeen Euros. That was too much to spend, even on Santa. Instead I snuck pictures of him through a window, and that was the end of our Lapland trip.
The train ride home passed faster than the ride up, as always is the case when leaving a place. We exchanged phone numbers and e-mails in a frenzy of goodbyes, and disembarked in Tampere. It was warm and pouring, and I trudged miserably to my bus stop, wet, tired, and sad.