Kiruna and Beyond

I booked my first ever train ticket to the arctic circle this week, it got me quite excited! I absolutely love trains anyway (seriously, I really prefer it over every other form of travel, it's civilized, elegant, has very low CO2 emissions, and is just plain enjoyable), so the fact that it's the cheapest way up to northern Sweden is a great plus.

Mid-February my master's program switches from here in Würzburg to a semester in Kiruna, Sweden (yes, way up north inside the arctic circle) until the end of June. So how exactly can you go from southern Germany all the way up to northern Sweden with less than a week off to do it?

- You can pay about 300 Euros and fly from Frankfurt to Kiruna with a layover in Stockholm (boring, non-environmentally friendly, and you can only take 20kg of luggage, so EEHH!)

- You can rent a car with 4 other people and split the bill 5 ways, so maybe 3-400 Euros apiece. Great option, you see some wonderful sights, but I've been through Germany lots of times, and quite frankly after 5 months in Sweden I'll probably see all the wildlife and scenery from Scandinavia one can take for a while. So coupled with the trouble of getting people to commit, worrying about insurance, and how to actually drive in -45 temperatures (even though I'm an engineer and should care about whether it's F or C, i conveniently leave it out because at -44 the two scales are the same, pretty cool eh?). You can also bring a good deal of stuff if you're willing to carry it on your lap for 30 hours, but in the end, no.

- You can take the BEST option and go the whole way by train. So the train i booked on the Swedish rail company, whatever it's called, was only 524 Korna (close to 60 euros) from Stockholm ALL the way to Kiruna, about 1200 km, how cool is that? It includes a sleeper car since it's a night train. Chaching!

Notice that's from Stockholm of course, so the plan is now to get a super cheap advance ticket straight from here to Copenhagen on maybe a Monday or Tuesday, spend a day or two there, take a quick cheap train up to Stockholm, another day or two there (including a nice Sabbath in Stockholm, not a bad place to be right?), then Saturday night hop on a 6 pm night train to Kiruna, and voila, I'm there Sunday morning ready for classes on Monday.

So in total you assume 40 euros to Copenhagen, 20 more to Stockholm, maybe 60 to Kiruna, toss in 200 euros for hostels, food, and fun in Scandinavia, and for a measly 300 euros I get to where I need to and see some absolutely amazing cities on the way, does life get any better?

I might add my trusty companion on my trip will be Gao, a fellow SpaceMaster I live right next door two. We've become quite good friends so it should be great fun traveling up together. Since he has to go back to China in the summer to see his family anyway we've thrown around the idea of a nice train trip all the way from Sweden to where he lives in Nanjing, but that's just a though for the moment : ) (my wheels are always turning for travel plans...).

Enough of this for a while, off to bed. I've finished the assignment for class tomorrow ("Spacecraft System Design", or lovingly SSD) so I just have to wake up, do some laundry, and sit through lecture in the afternoon and then enjoy the weekend. Very nice life here at the moment, happiness abounds quite often when I really think about it : )



(A rough visual of the trip)