Lapland 4

Lapland photo album:

Lapland album

Last day in Lapland. After breakfast, we had a little bit of free time in the morning before we had to start cleaning up to leave. I went skiing again. Then it was off to visit the real Santa Claus in the Santa Claus village.

This was maybe a little bit better than the Corn Palace in South Dakota, but only just a little. The best part was that you could mail a letter from Santa's official post office postmarked "Arctic Circle" (it seems they have forgotten that Santa is supposed to live at the North Pole, not 1723 km south of it). But the rest of it was just gift shops and things to take photos next to.


Then it was time for our photo op with the big guy himself. This was really bizarre. To get to Santa you have to walk through this thing that could only really be described as a haunted house. I have no idea what they were trying to go for, unless it was "the land of the naughty list," but it was really dark like an underground tunnel, and you had to walk over something that looked like lava, and there were creepy sound effects of gears turning and birds screeching. At one point you have to walk through this home movie style montage of Santa greeting little children and putting presents under trees projected onto a wall of dry ice. Very strange. The entire group of 50 got their picture taken with Santa in one huge shot. Then he told us how he had heard we've been very good this year and he would be coming to visit us in 10 months. He was very nice and spoke a few different languages, but I must say, his beard didn't even come close to looking real. Then they tried to get us to pay €250 for a copy of the picture. Since they try to make money off of you with the photos, they make it forbidden to take pictures inside Santa's house. But I couldn't help sneaking this one on the way out:

This is the Christmas tree you see as you're leaving the "meet Santa" area. Are you kidding me? Is this really the best they could do?

After Santa Land, the bus dropped us off at the train station in Rovaniemi. We still had 3 hours before our train left, so the plan was to leave our luggage in some of the lockers at the train station, and then go explore Rovaniemi. I had to go find change for the locker, and by the time I had gotten my bag in, everyone else had already left.
So I went to explore Rovaniemi on my own, which was fine with me. I really wanted to check out this museum of arctic science and culture called Arktikum, but it turned out to be closed on Mondays. So instead I went to some second hand shops hoping to find some Laplandish items, and generally wandered around the city. I saw the northernmost McDonald's in the world, which was pretty exciting.

The train back to Helsinki left at 6:00. Everyone was really tired, and I spent most of my waking time catching up on homework. At one point we stopped at a station that had freight cars full of wood and lumber. Because of my love for All-Things-Tree, I opened the curtain of the window to look around and take some pictures. All of a sudden I saw a bright green streak cross the sky, then branch out into a few long dancing arms. The Aurora Borealis! People who had gone out on the platform to smoke saw it too, and pretty soon the whole train had erupted with excitement. It only lasted for a minute or two before the clouds closed in again, but what a great way to end the trip!