Seth, on a frozen lake
Cold, very cold, especially in winter when temperatures dropped to -35C at night. Well it was night almost all the time. The journey began with a Skype call with Seth, a friend of mine who was living in France at the time. He really wanted to see the northern lights but couldn’t drive, and I really wanted to drive into the Arctic Circle and have someone to split the costs with. So we headed up to Arctic Sweden together.
We called her Roxane, beautiful isn’t she?
It wasn’t easy to rent a car there with a temporary license, I’ve only got my license for nine months at that point.
“Hey Seth, I’ve only driven a car for 42 hours before, like ever.” ~ Me, scaring Seth
Yep, we made it!
He didn’t have a choice though, we were already on our way north. I took us about two days to get up north, like real north, north like the Arctic Circle north. We spent a night staring up through the sunroof to observe the northern lights while sitting on our reclining heated seats, then we head back south to Stockholm.
Along the way, I learned many valuable lessons. Among these are: don’t try and pass a road train on narrow icy roads, don’t overtake on the brow of a hill using the opposite lane, don’t try an avoid a speed camera by driving on the wrong side of the road, don’t forget to wear a warm hat out in arctic temperatures, don’t jump on a frozen bit of the Baltic Sea, don’t try and go over 180km/h on compact snow, don’t drift on a frozen lake. All of which I definitely did not do.
Me, holding a huge block of snow in Sundsvall
While we were out in the middle of nowhere we had lots and lots of shrimp, it seems as if tiny shrimps were the only source of protein there. We had shrimp pizza, shrimp sandwiches, shrimp subways, shrimp cups, and baked shrimp. Thankfully, because of the cold weather seafood never goes bad. When we stayed at an AirBnB, the host even joked about the temperature in his fridge.
Me, walking on a frozen lake to see how people fished for food
“The beer in my fridge is 40 degrees Celsius warmer than the temperature outside.” ~ Andi
