LAPLAND - SİLENCE İN THE SNOW

Enough of heat, I decided to go for the cold in February 2007. Destination Finnish Lapland.  What appealed to me was the one night stay in an ice hotel. I was curious to see how this worked, whether everything was really made of ice and if I would be able to sleep at - 5 degrees Celsius (constant temperature at which rooms are kept so that they do not melt while you are asleep). The program also mentioned things like ice breaker ships, snowmobiles, husky sledges and reindeer promenades which all seemed quite interesting since I had never done any of those.
Going is easier said than done. First you have to prepare very carefully your suitcase, taking your thickest pullovers and socks, thermal underwear, boots that don't slip on ice , hats, gloves and all such things that we do not wear anymore in Istanbul. Some shopping is required if you are not a skier; otherwise your skiing gear will suffice.
And here I am on a plane to Helsinki.  After a short stopover at Helsinki airport, we continue North to Kemi where our ice hotel is located.

We reached Ice Castle (our hotel's name) at around 5:30 p.m. in pitch dark of course since the sun rises at 9:30 a.m. and sets at 4:00 p.m. in this season. We were taken to a wooden and heated chalet with lots of tables, chairs, benches on which you could even lie if you wanted to and a cafeteria open 24 hours a day. Then our keys were distributed. Those are not keys to the rooms since the rooms don't have any. They are just keys to big lockers where you put your suitcase that you cannot take out of the chalet because everything in it freezes if you do. That's a good start ! We then had a lesson on how to sleep but I will come to that later on. We were informed with great pleasure by the staff that today the weather is very hot (!)  since it snowed. Good. Let us first visit the hotel and then have dinner.

WE ENTERED FROM THE BACK DOOR
WHERE OUR BUS STOPPED.
SNOW WALLS AND WOODEN DOORS

                                                

STREETS OF THE HOTEL WİTH SNOW WALLS

A THEATRE FOR NİGHT ENTERTAINMENT

İCE STATUES
THİS YEAR THE THEME İS ''THE SEA''

MAİN DOOR OF THE HOTEL FROM THE İNSİDE

MAİN DOOR FROM OUTSİDE

THE HOTEL AT NİGHT FROM OUTSİDE.

YOU CAN EAT SNACKS HERE ON İCE TABLES

But we were to eat a ''grand dinner'' at the gourmet restaurant where our table had been set. Wonderful , the table is a big block of ice. The plates, forks, knives and glasses aren't but they keep sliding on the table and you need to keep an eye on them at all times. The seats are blocks of ice too, but they have been nice enough to put a reindeer fur on top of it so your seat does not melt with the heat of your body. And last but not least, your soup and food get cold in a second. The good thing is that your drinks stay cold. So every environment has its advantages.

OUR GROUP'S TABLE İS SET

OUR İCE TABLE AND SLİDİNG CUTLERY

GUESTS AS WELL SERVERS ARE FUNNILY DRESSED İN THİS
RESTAURANT, AREN'T THEY ?

                            

After dinner it would be nice to have a drink so here we are in the bar where even glasses are made of ice. No need for ice cubes.

We then visited the church and the adjacent chapel. Why a church here ? It seems people are choosing this church to get married and demand is high. Those people must be crazy. How do you wear a wedding gown at -5 degrees ?

Then you eventually have to go to sleep and things get harder. You go to an igloo-type buildings where the rooms are, all with low wooden doors. Your bedroom consists of a block of ice serving as bed but again thankfully covered with  reindeer skin. Apart from the bed, you have a lamp that gives you quite dim light and a tiny shelf on which to put your small belongings such as eyeglasses. That is it. On the bed, you see two bundles, one dark blue which is your polar sheet , a big bag with a zipper and a hood and a yellow polar sleeping bag which is shaped like the tomb of Tuthankamon ( exactly like an Egyptian tomb). 

THE İGLOO HOUSİNG THE ROOMS

THE DOOR TO MY ROOM

THE FURNİTURE AND SHEET

 
Time to get ready for bed as explained by the hotel staff. You take out your boots and put them beside you on the floor; you also take out your coat, one pullover and pants but you keep your second pullover and long johns on. You lay all those on the bed since you will have to sleep on them so that your body heat prevents your clothes from freezing all through the night. Now you are literally freezing . So you hop first in the dark blue polar sheet. But hopping is not so easy since you cannot step on the floor with your socked feet. It is all ice. So you wriggle into the sheet on the bed. You then go in the sleeping bag using the same method. All this takes 10 minutes of wriggling. Once in the sleeping bag, you cannot even move your legs anymore. You lie on the bed, put your arms in, cover your face with the sheet and the hood of the sleeping bag leaving one small hole to breathe and not commit suicide with the carbon monoxide you emit yourself. And good night ! That is if you are of the type that can sleep flat on your back , without turning around. That is not me. And the moment you start to turn, everything starts sliding left and right and becomes a mess. And imagine you have to go to the bathroom at night. You have to get dressed again, walk to the chalet, come back, undress and start the whole wriggling process all over again.
For me, this sleeping exercise lasted one and a half hours. At the end, I felt as if someone was choking me and I was buried alive in the tomb of Tuthankamon. So out I went of those stupid things, got dressed, walked to the chalet and realised I was already the 5th person who had given up sleeping on an ice bed. Now I understood why there were so many benches in the chalet. By 3:30 a.m. more than half our group had gathered there and the ''big sleepers'' joined us at around 6:00 a.m.  The staff of the Ice Castle do not ask you if you slept well. They ask you ''how many people managed to sleep''. Quite a funny experience as far as I am concerned. To try once in a lifetime.

The next morning we went on a short visit of Kemi . Nice buildings and everything is white and frozen,  the landscape, the sea, the streets. As you walk the empty streets you start praying to see a human being. No one. Deserted. Very depressing for someone used to the hassle of Istanbul.

THOSE THREE PEOPLE ARE FROM OUR GROUP.
İT İS SNOWİNG BEAUTİFULLY.

After Kemi, we headed for the Arctic Sea to ''sail'' on an ice breaker ship. It was a little colder here ; just (!) - 35 degrees. What am I doing here ? Am I crazy ? But it was quite an experience to watch this huge ship advance by breaking three meter deep ice . The stop in the middle of the sea is even more impressive since the ice closes around the ship at once and you become Moses walking on frozen water with a huge ship staring at you. And again everything is white of course. I started thinking that I definitely like color.  

THE SHİP'S TRAİL

THE İCE BREAKİNG

GETTİNG DOWN THE SHİP İN THE MİDDLE OF THE SEA

WHİTE İNFİNİTY

Then on to Rovaniemi, the capital city of Finnish Lapland, a heated hotel room and a nice hot bath. But visiting Rovaniemi is as depressing as visiting Kemi. A capital city covered in snow and ice with empty streets, just a few cars, shops with no one in them , a white frozen river, white white white.....  Empty white.... No wonder the suicide rate here is said to be one of the highest in the world.

We spent the afternoon at St Nicholas Village, a very touristic place in which  Santa Claus has his post office. Near Christmas time every year, it seems around 3 million letters are sent to Santa Claus by children from all over the world.
There is a blue wire stretching over the village. It is the line dividing the continent from the Arctic Circle. Once you pass under it, you are in the Arctic Circle.

I AM AT THE FRONTİER OF THE ARCTİC CİRCLE

The next day was safari day and my favorite. We were first taken to the safari company's offices where we were given boots, gloves, hats, a plastic face mask, a polar jumpsuit and finally a motorcycle helmet to wear. Then on to the snowmobiles. I loved driving the thing. Reaching 50 kilometers per hour on a frozen river, under a bright sun was intoxicating. I simply loved it. After having gone for around two hours, we reached the place where we would have our husky sledge ride. This looks easy in films and on documentaries,but steering and especially stopping a husky-driven sledge is not easy at all. The dogs are trained to run and the moment you set them free from their ropes, they run full speed. You are standing on the two thin wooden rear parts of the sledge. Between those two wooden poles, there is a thin metal rod. To slow down the sledge, you have to press with one foot on the rod; to stop it, you have to jump with both feet on the same rod which goes into the snow and stops the dogs. Not that easy when the huskies are running as fast as they can. The reindeer sleigh promenade we had after this was a piece of cake. Then two more hours of snowmobile to come back. That was again the best part of the day. So much so that I booked a snowmobile tour by myself for the next day when the group would go to see polar bears in a park. No such luck. The next day I was in bed in my hotel room with fever and no strength to get out of bed. No snowmobile and no polar bear. My trip finished there and then. Anyway, I did not loose too much, because the day after we were flying back to Istanbul anyway.

OUR SNOWMOBİLES

ME AND MY SNOWMOBİLE

THE HUSKİES ARE DYİNG TO GO

AND HERE WE GO

REİNDEER PROMENADE

 Lapland is definitely not an easy place to live. You cannot stay out too long because it is really cold. Whenever you come inside you spend ten minutes taking off coats, hats, gloves, and even one pullover since it is very hot inside. Then another ten minutes to get dressed up and go out again. You cannot take pictures easily because your camera simply freezes. So you have to carry a small one in your breast pocket to keep it hot, take it out, snap a shot, and put it back inside again. You can take another picture when the camera gets hot again.

My whole trip lasted four days , and I enjoyed it because I did things I had never done before. But four days were quite enough. Longer would be too much since in the end, the emptiness, the unending white of the snow and ice, the grey days , the long nights start sapping at  your morale. And you start missing the activity and crowd of Istanbul and its bright sunshine.