Lappland, part II

I'm so terrible with updating this blog...

One thing I neglected to mention in my previous post was that while Megan and I were staying in the hostel in Abisko, we also took the liberty of using the sauna there. A few people who take time out of their day to wander onto skype or gchat and talk with me will have heard this story already, but for those of you who haven't, I will recount this tale of culture shock.

Megan told me beforehand that this hostel had a sauna which you could use at certain times during the day, but had to go into completely naked. "Sure," I thought, "Sure, why not? It's cultural and it could be fun! I don't mind seeing Megan naked."

The evening I returned from my epic first day out on x-country skis, after a quick dinner and a short rest, Megan and I threw on pajama pants and sweatshirts over our birthday suits, grabbed some soap, and waited for the old man who ran the hostel. He arrived with fleece partially zipped, curly white chest hair peeking out, and a quick command for the other two travelers who had just arrived to hurry up.

A quick dash out into the snow then into the sauna entryway, slow start and rapid finish of stripping males and females, some shivering and a snatch at the small towels for sitting on, and we're finally in the hot, dark, steamy sauna.

Obviously I don't have any pictures for you guys to see, but the entire building was very cool. It was rough hewn wood painted red on the outside with the original wood visible from the inside. Wooden benches lined the walls except for the wall with the sauna door in it and deer antlers were mounted on one wall for the ladies to hang their clothes on. The men stayed on the opposite side of the room (where the lone candles were flickering by the single window) and put their clothes on the benches there.

Inside the sauna the old man (also completely naked) showed us how we were to bathe, mixing hot and cold water for us and after any of the girls washed their hair, he would command, "Bend forward, put your hair in front, use your hands" then promptly pour a bucketful of warm water over bent heads and backs.

The bench ran along the inside wall of the sauna, forming a narrow U-shaped sitting area. In the end it was Megan and myself, an American guy, a German man, two French girls and the French boyfriend of one of the girls, a few Dutch women, and maybe a Danish woman. The eucalyptus oil scented water mixed with the heavy pine-wood steam was extremely relaxing and I could feel my muscles loosening after that day's work of skiing.

After the heat got to be too much, I ran outside (still completely naked) and danced and jumped around outside on the icy, snowy porch. I didn't have the willpower to roll around in the snow (unlike the German man) or have a naked snowball fight (like the French girl and American guy), but instead ran back inside to enjoy the sauna a little longer. Megan didn't even venture past the entryway of the sauna.

The next morning, we headed out to see the dogs in the nearby kennel.

The visit started out innocently enough,

but ended up being disastrous for Megan's gloves:

The dog ran away with her glove and dumped it somewhere in one of the little wooden houses inside its enclosure.

We left Abisko that morning and headed back to Kiruna, leaving the train station and heading directly for the bus stop where we could catch a ride to the Ice Hotel.

There isn't much that words can do to describe the hotel. It was the hotel's 20th anniversary this winter, which they proudly pointed out in the ice sign in front of the hotel.

Apparently, all the ice that is used in the hotel is taken from the river the year before, sliced out of the surface of the water by gigantic chainsaw-like devices, lifted out, and placed in storage until they begin building.

They start with three different sized molds for the hotel: a large arch, a smaller arch, and a hexagonal shape. The molds are sprayed with a slushy mixture of snow and ice to form the shell of the hotel. The larger pointed arches are used to form the great hall:

The smaller arches are used for the rooms themselves:

And finally, the hexagonal shapes were used to form the small hallways:

The snow sinks and settles over the course of the winter, so the hallways become warped, the ceilings sink, and the doorways get lower and lower. The maintenance personnel will often have to re-carve the doorways sometime during the winter, as it gets too low for anyone to walk through comfortably. Though, maintaining the hotel in general is not too difficult as each room has an air hole or two in the top and whenever they need a new layer of snow in the room for the floor, people on the roof simply shovel snow from the roof down into the hole.

The artist suites are the rooms you see in photos with incredible ice and snow sculptures in them. Some are a bit freaky (in one room there was a giant girl's head made of snow and in one giant hand she held a huge ice teddy bear and the other was in the process of reaching towards the bed) and others are cute or amusing (one was an Ice Age themed room and another had naked women in it with light-up nipples). All of them were amazing though and I found many extremely beautiful.

Here are a few:

The rest of the photos are on my facebook

All of this is, of course, much better when you see it in person.

There was also an ice chapel, but it was in use the entire day because three different couples were getting married in a row. There was also a reindeer outside the chapel to pull the new couple around in a small sled:

We also stopped in at the Ice Bar, though we didn't actually buy anything to drink. Those big furry hats were expensive enough, and I don't think either of us were in any kind of mood for alcohol so early in the day, hahaha.

The bus took forever to come pick us up, so by the time we climbed up into its warmth, we couldn't feel our toes or move them.

Unfortunately, it was too cloudy to see the aurora that evening as well, so we didn't manage to see it at all during those 4 days. During dinner, the American guy, French girl, Megan, and myself all hung out in the hostel we (by coincidence) were all staying in and flitted between the Aurora Sky Station site and ChatRoulette.

We became friends with a native of Kiruna who was a friend of a friend of the American guy and who the next morning drove us to the airport. He also drove us around the city for a little tour that evening and hung out. He was the one who mentioned the marshmallow fluff and Anna Nichole Smith show which I discussed in an earlier post.

By the time we got to the airport, Megan and I were basically half dead and passed out in the plane. I got this photo of Lappland before I lost consciousness though: