I’m sitting on the train, slowly moving through last meters of Lulea. The time has come to leave my new home and return to the old one.
Luckily Veronika is accompanying me on the long journey south, which makes it easier. It was not easy to say goodbye. I have grown accustomed to the new way of life up here, and I must say I liked it very much. Nature, people, food I loved it all, but most of all I liked the polar climate with tons of snow, low temperatures and massive auroras dancing over the sky.
Speaking of auroras there is probably the biggest one until now dancing over our heads, it is so bright you’re supposed to see it from Stockholm. Sadly it’s cloudy here so … bad luck.
Veronika standing in the middle of a bay. The top layer is a bit melted so it looks like she’s standing on the water, but in reality there is 30cm of ice below.
Yesterday I had to go downtown to buy some things that cannot be bought in the store here. For some reason it was -17 so my face had a pleasure to be freezing for 3 hours (walking). The weirdest thing happened when I arrived home. In just about 1 hour, temperature jumped to 0 degrees. It’s incredible, I don’t remember that big of a temperature change in such a short time, ever.
In the evening we had a Christmas dinner together with all (or most) people who are still here. Each of us prepared a dish, I made “French salad” (literal translation from Slovenian, don’t know English name). Others made everything from turkey, ham, chicken, all kind of deserts and cookies. We were around 30 people, so there were just as many dishes. Too many to try them all! 🙂
Today I’ve been preparing for Veronika’s arrival most of the day. I still need to clean my room before I go wait her up to the train station, everything else is set. By the looks of it we are going to have a fun trip on Saturday to a land where sun never rises. =)
I’ve just spent last 8 hours updating my expense list. In total I had to read, translate to English and Slovenian, choose appropriate category for item, the store I bought it in, currency and date for a total of 600 items that I’ve bought over the past 5 months.
This must be one of the most boring / frustrating jobs there ever was, is, will ever be. I don’t know how people can do it, respect!
Short trip back to the numbers. So far I’ve spent a bit more than I was hoping for. Besides rent which was 1400€ for all 5 months, I’ve spent most of my money on trips and travel, plane and train tickets to come here and go home are also included here.
If we deduct this traveling expenses and trips (since I could have done that in Slovenia as well), the total price is around 1.5k€, which is not that bad. I will post a more detailed post at the end, when I’ll return home to Slovenia and analyse everything in details (with graphs & stuff).
The only number that really surprised me is how much I spent on food (note drinks are not included here). But from the looks of it I’ve spent around 150€ / month on food. Not sure how I managed to do that. 😀
Today was finally cold again. Finally? Yes, because there is nothing worse than melting snow that freezes over night. If the temperatures are low enough there is no ice here (at least on the roads). And hopefully we will be able to go walk over the sea when Veronika comes.
The weather forecast has as well gotten more pleasing. If the most optimistic forecast is true, we will have 4 days of not snow until New Year’s. Very good indeed, since I think it has been more than 3 weeks since I last saw the sun. Sadly it won’t be -30 when Veronika comes here on Thursday, pity…
Me in hockey gearMoon was extremely bright here, since there is little daylight. On a full moon you can see as good as during dawn/twilight, because of snow reflecting all the light around.It’s been a long time since I’ve last gazed upon sky like this.
-1 °C
9:49 am 
1:20 pm 
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