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Alex and I slowly leave the comfort of the house, and walk through the woods towards the bus stops. The amount of snow never ceases to amaze us. The bus takes us to downtown Sundsvall, which we cross quickly towards the train station.

The first leg of our long journey today is three-hour long up to the charming town of Umeå. We took a bit of time to go to the main place, reach the river Umeälven. It was completely frozen, with numerous footsteps across it.

So naturally, Alex wanted to do the only Alex thing possible. He left his bags to me and went for a cautious walk on the ice, just a few centimeters from the shore. It seemed really strong enough, so we exchanged bags and I tried too myself, very cautiously (and 50 cm from the edge, don’t worry mom).

We walked back towards the station and took a crowded train for the next four hours. It went pretty fast, as we slept a bit, and then played cards (after tying an incredible seven times at rock-paper-scissors!) for a good while. Good times!

For the whole journey today, we only snow endless snow and evergreen forests, which is really much more interesting than Belgium or Germany to be honest. However, the entire day was spent under a thick cloak of fog. Visibility was extremely low at times, and judging by the weather forecasts, I’m getting very scared that we will not see the Northern Lights at all. We gambled with mother Nature by staying only a few nights in Lapland, and we might have just drawn the shortest straw. Fingers crossed for the next days!

Arriving in Luleå at 17:30 and it’s already pitch darkness. For us both, it’s the furthest North we’ve ever been in our lives! We elected to go straight to the airbnb, half an hour walk from there. And it’s amazing. An entire appartment, super spacious, comfortable, heated floor in the bathroom, hoven, everything… There’s even a dryer so I could do my entire laundry just in time before running out of clothes, washing my two pair of pants and two sweaters at the same time, and I didn’t even need to wait for them to dry. That ROCKS.

Overwhelmed by this luxury, we went to the grocery store across the street and bought pizzas, a chocolate cake, beers, some provisions, and a hella lot of Smash, a peanut chips-meet-chocolate snack. We played cards again while listening for the billionth time to some Les 2 minutes du Peuple skits. Great evening!