A cooler and overcast day with a total light cloud cover. Consequently
temperatures were down a bit, but not by much. Perhaps a couple of degrees or
so, but enough to notice compared with the previous couple of days.
After having a short Skype conversation with Robyn, wandered off around the
town centre for a while and called into a few shops and the tourist centre
before heading for the bus stop. One smaller shopping centre had the notice
everywhere, 'Santa Was Here'. Later at the Santa Village the sign in the same
style read 'Santa Is Here'. I am sure that there is some significant
relationship between the two signs. And a merry Ho Ho Ho to you all.
Bus 8, the Santa Express as it is called, runs sort of every 30 minutes. The
tourist guides say every 30. However, the timetable shows that there can be one
hour gaps between buses. The trip is eight kms, therefore 16km return. For this
they charge 6.40 euro which seems a bit high to me. Is it a case of lets get it
from the tourists?
The bus was pretty empty, that is three of us until some locals boarded along
the way. I could tell they were locals because they all had electronic fare
cards to pop into the till slot and the other indication was because they spoke
local lingo. Actually, to be totally honest, an elderly couple of Australians
got on at the stop after me,now I think ab out it. They were on the bus coming
back as well and they told me they were from Melbourne.
The trip was interesting as we did pass over a few bridges and got views of the
lakes or rivers the city is build around. It seems that there are a couple
major arms to the lake, or two large rivers which join and flow around the
town. Actually I think that it is a lake because the guesthouse owner was
telling some guests about power dams stopping boats going very far on
sightseeing voyages.
I also spotted several smaller inlets which came up to the road. Some had houses
right down to the water line, like little holiday cottages, but more than likely
permanent residences. There were a few small boats moored alongside them as
well. All very pretty.
On one hillside there was a major ski jumping complex but there was never an
opportunity to get a picture of it. A pity because it did dominate the skyline
as it rose up from the ridge top. Quite a strange sight to me, especially as
there was no snow.
Santa's Village is a series of shops in a sort of mini shopping mall. Almost
everything on sale had the theme of Christmas. While there were a few things
that could have tempted me to buy something, many looked like the product of
Asian factories rather than from Santa's workshops. Unless, that is, he has
moved them off shore. However, most of the items were not the sort of thing he
was likely to deposit in children's stockings.
The most interesting spots I thought were:One; the Arctic Circle Line painted
across the open area. Last weekend they had had the Artic Circle Marathon and
it mus have started or finished on that line, judging by the banners which were
still hanging. Today a bus load of Japanese were mostly dominating the line
taking and having photos take of themselves with a foot on each side of the
line. Or else standing in front of the big multi-direction signpost showing
distances to a number of key cities around the world, but not to any in New
Zealand. It was only 2000 and something kms to the North Pole.
The second interesting area was the Santa Village Main Post Office. Here red
capped staff took your mail and money. There were lots of postcards on sale and
I bought one each for the grand children. They will get them with a Northern
Lights stamp and a special Arctic Circle post mark.
In the post office they had the longest letter every received by Santa. It was
an, almost, giant roll of paper, well perhaps at 413.8m long it is a giant
roll. It was made by 2110 children from 8 different schools the town of Brasov,
Romania.This in fact may be the town's one claim to fame!
Written on a blackboard was the information that almost 14 million letters from
197 different countries have arrived here for Santa. Around Christmas time he
can get 32,000 per day. In fact last Christmas (2009) he got over 600,000. The
most letters actually come from the UK, then Romania, Italy, Poland, Japan and
Finland at number six. So that volume along would justify a post office here.
Now I wonder how many emails he gets? Or perhaps he doesn't have a computer? Or
perhaps he is not letting any one know his email address.
One other thing which they do is to bundle up envelops into, obviously, bundles
and these are on sale with the funds going to UNICEF. That seems a good idea as
the money raised gets back to children. Well that's the idea anyway.
Everywhere in the village had carols playing. They seemed to be a reasonable mix
between Christian religious carols and Christmas secular songs. All the popular
ones of both types and all being sung in English. So perhaps Santa speaks
English?
I saw a sign for Santa's Office and also a pathway to see him and have your
photo taken with Santa. But that was all behind closed doors and I suspected
that you might have to pay for something.
So I didn't go in and I still don't know if Santa was actually there. I did not
see any of his little elves helpers either. So I think that the workshop is
hidden away in a secret place so that nosy boys and girls can not spy on them
and see the sort of gifts that are going to come at Christmas.
So bye bye Santa and it was interesting seeing your village and the coffee and
raspberry tart or cake were very nice. So yes I did buy something other that
the post cards and the envelope to send some more stuff home in. Yep another
DVD and a CD etc.
I got off the bus at the first stop in town and wandered across to the old
Marttiini Knife factory. Unfortunately, the guide book didn't mention (although
the tourist office did) the fact that the actual factory has shifted. I just saw
a large display of knives which have been or still are being made in the
factory. It was really a knife shop although I had a good chat to the lady at
the counter.
She mentioned how bright and large the midnight sun seemed to be last evening at
midnight. It sounded quite spectacular. She told me that for the last few years
the Northern Lights have not been as spectacular as they sometimes had been. It
was to do with the sun spot cycle on the sun she said and I think that she was
correct about that. Another thing she talked about was the blue time. It seems
in winter when there is just three hours of low light and the sun does not
appear, that in the last hour of light, as it reflects on the whiteness of the
snow, what light there is becomes blue and colours all that you can see. She
said that this was a very special time.
She also talked about how summer came in just three days this year. They had had
a tough winter with far more snow than usual and everyone assumed that the snow
would be still around even now. However, suddenly, about three weeks ago they
had a heat wave with temperatures reaching 28C. The snow vanished just like
that. She said that in just three days the trees went from having no leaves to
being in full green leaf coverage. It was an amazingly quick transformation
from winter to summer. I forgot to ask about spring.
So we had a good chat and then I headed back to the guest house to get rid of my
back pack and to rest up a bit before heading out for a meal. I have never seen
so many pizza restaurants in such a small area. It seems in this town if you
want to dine out than the choice is pizza, pizza or pizza, or burgers. There
are two Chinese restaurants and one was too expensive and the other didn't even
show its prices. The only place selling Lapland food was closed on Sundays and
Mondays. Actually, it did not rally matter as when I read the menu in the
window, I decided that it was the same sort of offerings as everywhere else I
had been on this trip. Except for cloud berry topping on a couple of deserts
for which you were paying around 8 euros or $NZ16.
So here I am in the capital city of Lapland and I have not seen: Santa, elves,
reindeer, huskies, or snow, or anyone in traditional clothing. Goodness, what
is the world coming too?
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