21:45 Fri.
9 Aug, 2013

Train ride

Day 1 , 146 remain
Lulea , Sweden
15 °C
Fair
3:49 am
9:21 pm

After landing at ARN airport, I found small trolley for baggage and began to explore the place. Airport is quite big, you need around 20-30minutes to walk from one side to another (on the same floor) and there are 3 floors in total. Airport features lots of shops and restaurants.

Throughout whole airport there was available Wi-Fi, the bigger challenge was to find electricity socket. Luckily there was some kind of waiting area just above train station with comfortable couches, electricity sockets and great view on the runway.

Arlanda airport.
Stocholm airport.

The airport was the first opportunity to spend some SEK (Swedish krona). Among restaurants there was a McDonalds, it’s prices were approximately 2 times higher than in Slovenia, sadly I’ll have to learn that this is true for all service here in Sweden. Standard menu (burger, fries, drink) costs around 70-90 SEK (around 10€), while large drink costs 20 SEK (2.3€).

Around 6’o clock I went down to the train station, which is located below airport and forms (if I remember correctly) the longest tunnel in Sweden (2km or something). Train station is small and only has two platforms with few benches to sit on. Sadly my train was delayed for 20 minutes, which is insane since this is the 3rd stop on the route Stockholm-Lulea.

Arlanda airport underground train station.
Arlanda airport underground train station.

The train ride from Stockholm to Lulea lasts around 12 hours. Because of this I chose the sleepers wagon, with 6 cosy bunk beds. After finding my room I thankfully learned that I’ll only be sharing it with 1 person (instead of 5). The guy I was sharing room with was from Algeria and was working in Sweden. He said that he was regular traveller with this train, so he knew how to prepare bunk beds (in the day time they are folded, so people can sit rather than lie). After talking for a bit with this guy (I never learned his name), I went and prepared for sleep. What really surprised me was the toilet, it was actually nicer than in Venice airport and to no comparison to Slovenian “hole in the floor” toilets on trains.
The room was equipped with electricity sockets, which was really nice as I was finally able to watch Scarface before I went to sleep.

Sleeper train SJ.

Even if I was really tired I barely slept. When the train went in to a curve, it slightly moved me from one to other side of the bed. The train was electrical, so it was very quiet, but still wagons (and people from other rooms) were making quite a lot of noise. I woke up at around 5 am, with sun quite high on the sky. I went to the corridor in front of rooms, to watch landscape from there (there were really big windows in this corridor). Scenery was beautiful with lots of lakes and the trees were everywhere.

Sweden from train.
First morning in Sweden

At 7 am I disembark the train, I have arrived to Lulea.

10:32 Thu.
8 Aug, 2013

Flight

Day -1 , 147 remain
Lulea , Sweden
17 °C
Fair
3:45 am
9:25 pm

After few intense weeks of preparations at school and home, the day has come, I’m leaving for 5 months for Lulea, Sweden.

Since I’m studying computer science I’ve decided to create my own blog, where I’ll keep some sort of public diary of life in the north. Sadly I didn’t have time to finish the blog, before I left. I had to wait for 3 weeks to get some stupid signature in my index, or I couldn’t leave, needless to say, I got signature 5 days before I left, after bribing the gate keeper to call me when professor arrived. Anyway at the moment the blog has basic functionality, but still looks ugly. I will try to continue working on it while I’ll be in Sweden.

Back to the trip, I’m currently flying somewhere over Germany with Norwegian and yes, we have internet on the plane, although it’s slow, but still better than nothing. The flight is calm, sadly there are clouds all over the sky so I can’t see any land. Pity I was really looking forward to seeing some EU from the sky.
I left home today at around 5.30 AM with my parents and Veronika. Saying goodbye was a bit more emotional than I expected, I guess I’ll really going to miss my folks, but hey, if everything goes as planned Veronika is going to come and visit me soon.

The flight will take approximately 2.5h, we’ll land at Stockholm ARN from where I’ll leave with train at 6.30pm to Lulea. I’m still not sure how it’ll survive 12h on the train, hopefully no one will try to mug me while I’ll be sleeping. And hopefully there will be Wi-Fi on the airport, otherwise I don’t know what I’ll do for 6 hours.

So much for now, I’ll try to upload one photo for test in this post, although I don’t have high hopes with this internet.

Talk to you soon,
JB

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