Dreaming Lapland

Tell me if I am being ungrateful??? During the cold winter months in İstanbul, I was constantly dreaming of Datca, sun, heat, sea and all the things related with that. And here I am and now complaing about the heat and dreaming about winter and snow.

Last winter we did not have snow in İstanbul, and the year before that while there was a snow storm in İstanbul for a full week, I was in Sri Lanka. Where?? On a beach again complaining about the heat.So I miss snow and the cozy days in the house, it brings along... And I also miss gluehwein (hot wine with spices), my tradition in the snow.

But my best snow memories are from Finnish Lapland which I have visited 7 years ago. And it was started with a funny story. The plan was to stay in Jyvaskyla at a friends house before flying to Lapland. As there was no direct flight, the route designed by my travel agency was İstanbul - Stockholm - Jyvaskyla. After using the Stockholm airport as a transit passenger for couple hours, I peacefully flew to Jyvaskyla. When I reached there it was around 10 pm and I was the only foreigner on the small plane. While all my fellow Finnish passengers quickly left the airport within couple minutes, I started to search for a single soul in the airport to show my passport and officially enter the country. But guess what ? There was absolutely nobody. No customs officer, no guard, no body. I felt like I was in a horror movie where everyone dissappeared suddenly. After waiting for 5-10 minutes for somebody to appear with passport in my hand, I finally decided to leave the empty airport.

And on the way back to İstanbul, I took a ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm. No passport control there either. So I can clearly state that up to now no Finnish offical is aware that I was in their country.

So if we come back to the main subject of this post, Lapland and snow were just great. As I was a lousy skier, I opted for safaris. My first one was reindeer safari. I still remember the cuteness of my reindeer with no horns. Do I advise a reindeer safari? Well, not really. It is very slow and after a while you are starting to freeze.
But the real deal was husky safari. It was so great. Try to do it once in your life if you get a chance. First it was really scary to be in the wild, with 9 dogs alone, for more than 2 hours. But luckily they were very smart and tourist friendly animals and also a snowmobile from the farm was checking for me at certain points. And the huskies knew their way back home and they were extremly patient with a foreigner who was trying to give them orders in English or Turkish while they only understood Finnish. On a husky safari, all you have to learn was to stand on the sledge and use the breaks when necessary.

It was an extremly cold and snowy day where the batteries of my camera were frozen. Even the owners of the husky farm thought about cancelling the safari for a while. But for my luck, they have decided against it. Whole trip was such an adrenaline rush. And on my return, they welcomed me to a small cottage with a big fire and offered some hot wine and a big slice of bread with butter and blueberry jam on it. It was so delicious..