Lapland III

Continuing from my previous posts on my Lapland trip, apart from the various winter activities that i participated in, the next most memorable one will be the climb up some mountain in the hope to see the Northern Lights.

So why the memorable event, not because i did see the Northern Lights and in fact i did not, but rather it is memorable in a bad way. As far as i remembered, i think i almost froze to death in the chilly night and on the mountain itself, the heavy snowstorm along the snowy cliff did almost scared me to death.

Walking along the night and cold path, we ventured off following some Greek guys and hopefully can catch some glimpse of the Northern Lights. Well... obviously in the dark night, any form of light is very obvious, but the natural wonder will not just appear for us, but some man-made light did brighten up the night.

After some tortuous walk in the chilly weather, we finally reached the top of the mountain, where there is only endless layers of snow which comes up to knee level waiting for us and a damn snowy weather. While we attempt to use my camera on a tripod to take some picture of us, the weather prove to be too windy and cold, such that my camera start to malfunction a bit despite being weather resistant.

As seen from my face, i am definitely not enjoying the weather at all. After this we went to a nearby building, which seriously look like some spooky place in the middle of no where.

Look at the amount of snow on the building, feels like it is from the last Ice Age with all the snow look like some rotten snow.

What is a winter without building a snowman!

While it is not the exactly figure of a snowman, but i guess everyone kind of get the idea. Of course in a typical Finnish kind of winter, there must be the famous Finnish sauna! Although i am not going to post any degree of naked people, so no sauna pictures! After 3 days 2 nights of fun, time to leave the icy land in the north to return to the less snowy Helsinki.

Signing off in the snow!

Lapland II

After hours and hours of bus ride, we finally reached our destination Levi Ski Resort. The weather was kind of different, as i expected it to be a lot colder than Helsinki, since it is further up north and obviously from the surrounding, everywhere was covered with layers and layers of snow.

Our accommodation was 2 cottage, with a kitchen, dining place, living room, attic where the sleeping area is and of course sauna! Since it is a winter cottage, obviously there will be a fireplace to keep ourselves warm, although with modern technology radiators are available. So, with my scouting expertise we started a small fire, however this small fire triggered the fire alarm because we did not open the chimney airway, and ended up smoking up the entire place. Luckily for us, no fire engine came as we managed to open the airway in time for the smoke to clear.


Most of our meals are cook by us, so some of the easiest things to cook are of course pasta!

So what is there to do at a Ski Resort, of course skiing! There are two kind of skiing, downhill ski and cross country ski. Basically downhill ski is skiing down a hill while cross country is skiing across flat ground. Cross country ski seems a lot easier because the equipment seems lighter and more convenient, while downhill ski looks more for professional.


See the difference in the size of the shoes used for cross country ski and downhill ski, not to mention the amount of pain i had to endure wearing the downhill ski boots. While kind of enjoying ourselves or maybe killing ourselves trying downhill ski, the temperature drop from around 0 degrees to like -13 degrees, reaching a minimum of -15 degrees!


What other interesting activities are there to do in the snowy weather, definitely snow mobile! Snow mobile is really exciting, maybe not so much for those who drive a motor bike since i find it rather similar, with the speed trill but in a snowy environment. We were provided coveralls, which are really warm and able to protect us from everything that is going to come at us.


Next stop is Reindeer farm, although since it is late at night we only see one reindeer and took some pictures with the cute animal.

Enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate and some pulla in the wooden cabin.


Although me and my partner are the only ones who didn't have any form of accident, everyone managed to get back to the resort in one piece and of course i enjoyed it a lot.


Well... i should not cramp everything into one single post, so on to next post to continue Lapland!

Lapland

It has been a long time since i last blogged, not that i am busy literally, but really i have stuff to do. Maybe not many of my friends know, but when i need to do something that is not routine, i kind of need more than average time to actually start doing it. In scientific term, i have very high inertia for activities that are not routine to me.

And since i have not blog much about my SEP trip, maybe now is the time to slowly summaries the entire trip thus fast. My last SEP trip blog is about my trip to Estonia, which happened on the first weekend of my semester. The next trip is to Lapland, which is northern Finland, which is full of snow.

Start of Lapland trip, at Helsinki University of Economics Club in Helsinki


After a tedious 10+ hours of bus ride, we finally reach the first stop of the Lapland trip, Santa Claus village.


Seriously there is nothing much at Santa Claus village, which is totally commercialized which so many souvenir shops. Probably the only thing you can see is the Arctic circle line, taking picture with Santa old man and sending a post card from the post office which bears the Santa chop, or even send a postcard that will be delivered the next Christmas.


Distance to the various major cities in the world, including Singapore!


After Santa Claus village, we continued our bus ride for another couple of hours and finally we reached Levi Ski Resort!


Ok that is all for now... next will continue the episode of Levi Ski Resort!

Snow!

Sidetrack before i continue to update my Estonia trip, but.... finally it has started to snow! Compare the differences....

1st Dinner party

So after meeting the girls from University of Helsinki to buy tickets to Estonia, we decided to go to Hui Chuen's apartment for dinner. We bought food from Lidi, which seems to be cheaper as compared to K-market or Alepa. At her apartment, we met Geogia from Spain and Alamos from Hong Kong (ok i don't really know how to spell their names).



















While most of us waited and enjoy ourselves by chatting, our main chef who is Bai Ke is busy fixing up our dinner!

The end result! Ok so only the vegetables and potatoes are cooked, the other pizzas are just bought and heated in the oven. All these for like 10 people. A bit little i think although there is rice available :/



















Start the "feast"!



















End off the feast with a group photo of the 10 hungry people! Although there are more laughter after the dinner because of the Hong Kong slang in the Chinese by the guy from Hong Kong, we did not stay too late for the party that was going on in the same block because we were all heading for Estonia the next day. So next is Estonia!

My room

The Kitchen is full of things left over from previous tenants.



The living room looks like the only place for me to hang my wet clothes :/



Just moving in is so messy!



Forgot to bring some bedsheets, had to go out and buy on my first night and it cost like 10 Euro for the covers.

First Day of Finland

Blogging these few days of Finland after my internet connection is finally up. Though the internet connection is not as fast as i expect, but i guess at least it is still decent broadband. The flight from Singapore to Finland went relatively well, though the landing part at Helsinki airport was rather scary because of aborted landing and all the fog present. 2 nice ladies picked us up at Helsinki airport, Elina and Emmi, though it was Elina who was driving a car went on to fetch us to our accommodation while Emmi stayed on to wait for the other students from NUS.

I would upload some photos of my apartment, but rather lazy now so maybe i will upload later. Haven't really taken any pictures of my school, maybe i should soon though my school looks like some old industry. So the first shock of the trip is when i went to my apartment just to put down my luggage, i saw 1 of the room is occupied by a girl, which i found it to be weird that they actually arrange for students of the opposite sex to stay together. But since i need to rush to school to enroll, i didn't talk to her and left my apartment promptly. The weather apparently is not as bad as i have expected, that i need to have like almost 4 to 5 layers to withstand the cold. In the end, i just went like 1 long sleeves t-shirt and my North Face jacket, and apparently it is sufficient.

So basically my first day is like nothing much yet, and maybe i should save the other events for my next entry since i think i should rest early tonight. Stay tune for more actions and hopefully for any photos :?