We were traveling through the Baltic states. We have visited the Hill of Crosses in Lithuania, at 2 AM (scary, mainly because of small hanged crosses, shaking in a wind).
Estonia - one long road heading to Tallinn, surrounded by swamps. And bus stops in no man's land. And first traffic signs with reindeers (or moose? now I am not sure).
Tallinn - a traffic signs with ducks :-)
Seagull on a ferry to Helsinki
Helsinki Cathedral, without snow in December
We spent one night at Villa Tammikko
Helsinki - no snow, surprisingly, at the beginning of December. First snow appeared approximately in the middle of the way to Oulu.
One of our stops - Kuhnamo lake, close to Äänekoski city
We spotted the first moose approx. 70 kilometers south of Oulu. We visited the local market at Oulu and tried some local food there (Pulla pie, some pies with salmon and reindeer meat, etc.).
"Continue" and "tall" in Finnish - "Slaughterhouse" and "Cunt" in Czech
The Finnish language is using very strange expressions sometimes
Oulu market hall
Rovaniemi - lampposts are representing polar circle line
Lapland
Beautiful northern lights appeared at the time of our arrival at our destination, house on the shore of Vuontisjärvi lake.
So, what you can do in Lapland during the winter?
cross-country skiing (my absolutely first experience)
snowshoeing
ice fishing (I was not attending :-))
ice skating, ice hockey
building an igloo (we have not finished it)
taking a sauna (sauna is basically in every inhabited house)
dog sledding
Polar night is really long (a day has approximately 3-4 hours only), so there is a big problem distinguishing actual time, you don't know if there is 4 PM, or 9 PM :-).
The lowest temperature, which I've seen there on the thermometer was approx. -28 degrees of Celsius. Sometimes power outages happen because of the freeze.
Dog sledding
We had an amazing ride with Hetta Huskies, during sunset. We took a shorter ride (6 kilometers) because of low temperatures.
And one video:
Meteorological phenomena
Light pillars (created by ice crystals in the sky) - very nice in the night, pillars are soaring from each source of light. You can see for example a village over the horizon. Or passing car behind trees.
Arctic clouds - Polar stratospheric clouds, rainbow clouds, formed by frozen particles.
Belt of Venus - Since the Sun is not rising over the horizon in winter, you can observe phenomena called the belt of Venus.
Nature
Reindeer
Reindeer
Belt of Venus and hill without trees
Really thin and short trees...
Food
Candies - really weird approach, to have salty candies. I don't want to see Salmiakki anymore :-).
Pies - Pulla bread was really good, together with meat pies (reindeer, solomon).
Meat - Reindeer meat is awesome, with a fine structure and liver look. Moose (hirvi) sausage was also really good.
Fish - We tried some fish from a shop - all of them were sweetened, so quite unusual for me.
Trip back to the Czech Republic
We have visited the ice hotel in Kiruna (Sweden) during return:
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