Rovaniemi

Arrived to Rovaniemi in the evening and was glad to get off the train after 9 hours. I went down to the University of Lapland where Venkata let me into the student residences. With many of the students on summer holidays it was easy to find a spare space to sleep.
On Tuesday I went for a walk around the little lake near the uni and crossed over the river to have a picnic lunch looking back over to town. In the afternoon I went to the Arktikum, which contained the Museum of Lapland and the Arctic Centre. Saw plenty of traditional Lappi costumes, and information about climate change, the Lappland culture and the impact of the wars (the germans burnt every town to the ground here as they retreated).
On Wednesday I waited for the rain to clear and then met Anna-mari to stay at her place for a few days. We went for a walk up Ounasvaara hill, a popular place for the locals to go skiing, running and picking berries. We found a whole hillside full of blueberries just waiting to be eaten. This occupied us until it was almost getting dark (11pm) and time to begin the Rovaniemi pub crawl. First stop was a Finnish pub with the local football hooligans to see Finland beat Kazakstan. Then it was onto Irish Times (what town doesnt have an irish pub) and then finished the night off at Hemmingways.
Thursday it was time for me to visit the most famous attraction in Rovaniemi... a visit to the real Santa Claus. The village on the arctic circle was all decked out with plenty of cheesy souvenir shops and christmas carols being blasted out over the plaza. This is also the site of the Santa Main Post Office where they receive thousands of letters each day all addressed to Santa at The North Pole. The highlight of course being the opportunity to meet santa and find out what happened to my christmas orders from the last 23 years. Went for a walk to Santa`s forest to get stuck into some more blueberries.
On Friday I went back to Ounasvaara and treeked along the ridge past Isorakka and found a good clearing in the pine forrest to make a fire and cook up my lunch of Makarra (Finish sausage) with Sinappi (weird sauce). In the evening we headed to see a local band consisting of just a drummer and bass player (but not drum and bass music) who were bashing out some cool tunes.
On Saturday I stocked up on food for the trip back to helsinki and got the 1300 slow train to Oulu and then the Pendolino (super fast, over 205km/h for the last 2 hours of the trip when the driver found the accelerator) through Tampere to Helsinki. I dropped my bags at the EuroHostel and headed into see the nightlife at BarFly.
Sunday enjoyed a huge salmon for breakfast/lunch by the port and then got a plane down to Zürich, CH.