ABOUT THE MIDDAY NIGHT TRIP

Kiruna (Sweden),  december 2001

It was years that I wanted to travel north of the polar circle in december when the sun never rises over the horizon. Hence in the middle of december I got on the same train that six months earlier brought me  there to see the midnight sun. But now everything was so different: the excitement for the coming midsummer (23rd june) of all the people on that crowded train running for 24 hours lit by the sun turned into the silence of an almost empty train lit at most for few hours by a twilight-like light. I got in Kiruna at 11.30 a.m. and I was amazed by the orange light reflected by the snow giving to the landscape a dash of unreality. This kind of light kept for 2 hours and I admired it while watching a snow-scooter race at the top of a hill nearby Kiruna. I remember the kids playing hockey in the frozen streets or in some of the several ice rinks, the old women pushing a kind of sledge to prevent them from slipping down and the darkness that at  2.30 a.m. had already covered everything.
The following days I visited the house of a dog sledge driver, friend of a guy known on the train on the way to Kiruna. Outside the house thirty beautiful dogs and all the equipment to travel in the snowy countryside for several days by dog-sledge 

THE ICE HOTEL

I hitch hiked to the ice hotel (20 km from Kiruna) since the taxi-jeep was fucking expensive. I still remember me aside the street with the frozen thumb up praying for a lift while the cold wind was freezing up my face. I knew I had less than one hour before the darkness came up and frankly I didn't believe to my eye when a france guy stopped (maybe for sympathy) and let me on his car.
I really liked the ice hotel. I think it's worth a trip, even if I just visited it during the day, since sleeping was expensive (but not very expensive, at least for a simple room). They rebuild it every year at the end of november (it may take some weeks) and usually it melts down in April. Every year it is different and the rooms with their sculptures are carved in situ by international artists. The year I visited it, there were 66 rooms, one bar and they were building the church and the cinema. There were simple rooms, with just a normal bed or ultra decorated room, for example the one where the bed was a big ice vessel. The beds were blocks of ice covered by wooden boards on which were leant  the mattresses. As blankets there were reindeer skins, but to sleep you were also provided by a thick sleeping bag (the ones of the army). In case you sleep there, you are supposed to leave your luggage at the reception, that is a wooden (heated) structure outside the ice hotel. Then you go to your room with all your clothes and took them off only when you are inside your sleeping bag pushing them at the bottom of it. The temperature inside the ice hotel is between the -2 C and -9 C, but, I promise, you it's warmer than outside!!!!!! Hence the only non-iced stuff in the room are the wooden boards, the mattresses and a curtain as door. Also the glasses of the bar are ice-made, and you can use for three times before they melt. One of the most beautiful things I remember about the ice hotel was the landscape of the frozen lake where it's built. You can also have a bath in the swimming pool, just in case you feel too hot in your room :-))

Alby