Adventures in the Arctic Circle

This past weekend we ventured out of our comfort zone and into the sub-zero degree weather of the Finnish part of the Arctic Circle (Lapland) seeking Northern Lights and lots of outdoor time in the ample snow. We had a wonderful, wonderful time and were simply happy to be partaking in so many new experiences! First, we flew from Amsterdam to Helsinki on Finnair. We both loved the airline - admittedly, this awesome performance may have made us like them more - but the friendly service, comfortable economy seats, and tasty snack (curry chicken salad sandwich) in 100% compostable packaging really sealed the deal for us.

We arrived in Ivalo - the Northern-most airport in Finland (see pic below):

...and realized very quickly that despite packing enough clothes to never be wearing less than 7 layers of clothing at any given time, our woolen "winter" coats looked like summer cardigans next to the huge down parkas that everyone else was wearing. The warmth provided by their coats was only bolstered by the copious amounts of champagne that people were purchasing and drinking on our 10 am flight. This aside, we were told repeatedly during the course of the weekend that we chose a very warm weekend to be in Finland - a few days before it was -40 degrees (sidenote: -40 Celsius is the same as -40 Fahrenheit. Crazy, eh?).

Anyways, we made our way to our hotel ~50 km outside of Ivalo:

On the drive to the hotel - we enjoyed watching snow whirl across the road

...and were blown away by scenes like this.

At this hotel we would be staying in a glass igloo in the hopes of catching the Northern Lights in the laziest [and warmest?] way possible AND because we were pretty sure that we wouldn't hold up so well in the ice igloos which stay between -3 and -6 degrees Celsius. It was incredibly amusing to us when we arrived at the hotel and the person who worked there pronounced our last name perfectly, without any hesitation but stumbled over the names of the other couples that had arrived with us whose names had far less letters and syllables. We also realized this is why airport personnel always ask whether David is from Finland when they see his last name. While Finnish words seem lengthy to our unaccustomed eyes, the spoken language is incredibly beautiful and we really enjoyed just listening to people speak (it's not eavesdropping if you can't understand, right?).

snow igloos!

After enjoying the view from our glass igloo, we headed out for our first sauna experience in Finland. Saunas are a pretty integral part of life there - apparently there are ~2 million saunas in Finland and the population of the country is 5 million! The saunas at the hotel were divided by gender and mine was completely empty; while David's sauna had several people (including one female and a guy reading Lolita). After the saunas we ate dinner and headed back to our glass igloo to take in views of the night sky.

In order to try to see the Northern Lights, we set our phone alarms to go off every 45 minutes or so - and despite my best intentions, I was not quite as great at waking up when the alarms went off as David. The times I did wake up I was still half asleep and kept thinking I was seeing the Lights. Sadly, we did not see them - probably because the light from the full moon almost directly overhead drowned out any other lights. However, we woke up in the morning extremely excited and enthusiastic to go on a little trip with these guys:

Husky pups - the fence was only there to protect them from being kidnapped and taken home by  me!

Leiden in the snow

Looking out my office window

It's thawing now, but for awhile there much of Europe was a winter wonderland, our corner of the Netherlands most certainly included. We had at least a week below zero, and little by little the canals began to freeze. It started at first with areas sheltered from the wind, then the icy bits slowly crept towards each other, and finally made their way under the bridges, which insulate the water below and keep it relatively warm.

Snowfall was pretty light at first, but still lovely, especially as we'd started to give up hope that we'd ever get to see Leiden under a blanket.

While the snowfall was wonderful for us, many Dutch people were disappointed by the snow, as it posed a potential barrier to Elfstedentocht, an ice skating race through the Eleven Cities of Friesland. The race can only run when it freezes for long enough that the canal ice reaches 15 cm throughout the entire 200 km course, at which point thousands of would-be national heroes make their way to Friesland to compete in this rare event. As the "Eleven Cities Tour" only takes place once ever 10 years or so, the entire country went wild with speculation about whether the race would occur, and politicians curried favor by publicly proclaiming that race day should become a spontaneous national holiday. Aside from the excitement generated by its inherent unpredictability, the race has an aura of myth owing in strong part to the Hell of 1963, when only 69 out of 10,000 contestants completed the race, with the winner clocking in at just under 11 hours! Keep in mind that at this time, people still tried to stay warm by stuffing newspaper in their clothes as insulation. (And yes, I'm of course getting all my facts from Wikipedia)

It's not obvious from the pictures here, but Nisha was fearless on the ice,
whereas I just walked out a few feet.

Sadly, that beautiful snow literally did blanket the canals, insulating the water below against the freezing air. While some people went out for an unofficial Elfstedentocht, the pictures above are as close as we came to any canal skating.

We may have missed out on the drama of the big race, but the entire experience was new to us - the mysterious whorls in the forming ice, kids learning to skate by pushing chairs around in front of their houses, the realization that EVERY Dutch family has a sled and skates tucked hopefully away, just in case.


Aside from going out to snap a few pictures, I guess it's pretty obvious how we enjoyed our snow days...